g back, though," he told Hollister before he left. "I think
I shall put up a cabin and winter here."

"I'll be glad to see you," Hollister replied, "but it's a lonely
valley in the winter."

Lawanne smiled.

"I can stand isolation for a change," he said. "I want to write a
book. And while I am outside I'll send you in a couple that I have
already written. You will see me in October. Try to get the
shingle-bolt rush over so we can go out after deer together now and
then."

So for a time the Toba saw no more of Lawanne. Hollister missed him.
So did Doris. But she had Myra Bland to keep her company while
Hollister was away at work in the timber. Sometimes Bland himself
dropped in. But Hollister could never find himself on any common
ground of mutual interest with this sporting Englishman. He was a
bluff, hearty, healthy man, apparently without either intellect or
affectation.

"What do you think of Bland?" he asked Doris once.

"I can't think of him, because I can't see him," she answered. "He is
either very clever at concealing any sort of personality, or he is
simply a big, strong, stupid man."

Which was precisely what Hollister himself thought.

"Isn't it queer," Doris went on, "how vivid a thing personality is?
Now Myra and Mr. Lawanne are definite, colorable entities to me. So is
Charlie Mills, quiet as he is. And yet I can't make Bland seem
anything more than simply a voice with a slightly English accent."

"Well, there must be something to him, or she wouldn't have married
him," Hollister remarked.

"Perhaps. But I shouldn't wonder if she married him for something that
existed mostly in her own mind," Doris reflected. "Women often do
that--men too, I suppose. I very nearly did myself once. Then I
discovered that this ideal man was something I had created in my own
imagination."

"How did you find that out before you were committed to the
enterprise?" he asked curiously.

"Because my reason and my emotions were in continual conflict over
that man," Doris said thoughtfully. "I have always been sure, ever
since I began to take men seriously, that I wouldn't get on very long
with any man who was simply a strong, healthy animal. And as soon as I
saw that this admirable young man of mine hadn't much to offer that
wasn't purely physical, why, the glamor all faded."

"Maybe mine will fade too," Hollister suggested.

"Oh, you're fishing for compliments now," she laughed. "You know very
well you are. But