she look and shudder and turn away? He shook off that ghastly thought.
She would never see him. She could only touch him, feel him, hear the
tenderness of his voice, know his guarding care. And to those things
which were realities she would always respond with an intensity that
thrilled him and gladdened him and made him feel that life was good.

"Are you glad you're here?" he asked suddenly.

"I would pinch you for such a silly question if it weren't that I
would probably upset the canoe," Doris laughed. "Glad?"

"There must be quite a streak of pure barbarian in me," she said after
a while. "I love the smell of the earth and the sea and the woods.
Even when I could see, I never cared a lot for town. It would be all
right for awhile, then I would revolt against the noise, the dirt and
smoke, the miles and miles of houses rubbing shoulders against each
other, and all the thousands of people scuttling back and forth,
like--well, it seems sometimes almost as aimless as the scurrying of
ants when you step on their hill. Of course it isn't. But I used to
feel that way. When I was in my second year at Berkeley I had a brain
storm like that. I took the train north and turned up at home--we had
a camp running on Thurlow Island then. Daddy read the riot act and
sent me back on the next steamer. It was funny--just an irresistible
impulse to get back to my own country, among my own people. I often
wonder if it isn't some such instinct that keeps sailors at sea, no
matter what the sea does to them. I have sat on that ridge"--she
pointed unerringly to the first summit above Hollister's timber,
straight back and high above the rim of the great cliff south of the
Big Bend--"and felt as if I had drunk a lot of wine; just to be away
up in that clear still air, with not a living soul near and the
mountains standing all around like the pyramids."

"Do you know that you have a wonderful sense of direction, Doris?"
Hollister said. "You pointed to the highest part of that ridge as
straight as if you could see it."

"I do see it," she smiled, "I mean I know where I am, and I have in my
mind a very clear picture of my surroundings always, so long as I am
on familiar ground."

Hollister knew this to be so, in a certain measure, on a small scale.
In a room she knew Doris moved as surely and rapidly as he did
himself. He had dreaded a little lest she should find herself feeling
lost and helpless in this immensity of forest and hills whic