the uplands. With a satisfied
manner that suggested she had been seeking just that very spot, the girl
sat down upon the lichened stones, then looked up to him with a smile
and a slight movement of the head that plainly invited him to a place
beside her.

He towered above her, darkly reluctant.

"Do sit down. You must be tired."

"I am."

Dubiously he seated himself at a little distance.

"And only your pains for your trouble?"

He nodded.

"I watched you, off and on, from the windows. You might have been
looking for a pin, from your painstaking air, off there along the
cliffs."

He nodded again, gloomily. Her comment seemed to admit of no more
compromising method of reply.

"Then you've nothing to tell me?"

He pursed his lips, depreciatory, lifted his shoulders not quite
happily, and swung one lanky leg across the other as he slouched,
morosely eyeing the sheets of sapphire that made their prison walls.

"No. There's no good news yet."

"And you've no inclination to talk to me, either?"

"I've told you I don't feel--well--exactly light-hearted this morning."

There was a little silence. She watched him askance with her fugitive,
shadowy, sympathetic and shrewd smile.

"Must I make talk, then?" she demanded at length.

"If we must, I suppose--you'll have to show the way. My mind's hardly
equal to trail-breaking to-day."

"So I shall, then. Hugh...." She leaned toward him, dropping her hand
over his own with an effect of infinite comprehension. "Hugh," she
repeated, meeting his gaze squarely as he looked up, startled--"what's
the good of keeping up the make-believe? You _know_!"

The breath clicked in his throat, and his glance wavered uneasily, then
steadied again to hers. And through a long moment neither stirred, but
sat so, eye to eye, searching each the other's mind and heart.

At length he confessed it with an uncertain, shamefaced nod.

"That's right," he said: "I do know--now."

She removed her hand and sat back without lessening the fixity of her
regard.

"When did you find it out?"

"This morning. That is, it came to me all of a sudden--" His gaze fell;
he stammered and felt his face burning.

"Hugh, that's not quite honest. I know you hadn't guessed, last night--I
_know_ it. How did you come to find it out this morning? Tell me!"

He persisted, as unconvincing as an unimaginative child trying to
explain away a mischief:

"It was just a little while ago. I was thinking thing