lby run gives them all the cold
good-bye."

She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange,
lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body
and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct
of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him?
Yet there was something between them which had its authority over their
lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the
bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those
centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had
come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate,
that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost
invisible horizon. So much had occurred and she felt so old this
morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she
must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed
it-if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his
life-work murdered?

She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to
work, he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after
all? She had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she
not the right of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not
the world know that he had saved her life?

As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett
and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: "He
is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was no
place for him."

"Big men like him think they can do anything," Jowett replied, a little
ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for
Ingolby.

He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might
challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so.

"It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply. "He does not measure
himself against the world so. He is like--like a child," she added.

"It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett rejoined; "and he's
the biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man's business
as though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the
West on a horse-trade, but I'd look shy about doing a trade with him.
You can't dope a horse so he won't know. He's on to it, sees it-sees
it like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and--" He
stopped short. The Master Go