d beautiful, the wonderfully developed insight into nature's
secrets, and the sudden-dawning revelation that he was no omniscient
being exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of man--all these showed
him the strength of his manhood and of his passion, and that the life
he had chosen was of all lives the one calculated to make love sad and
terrible.

Helen Rayner haunted him. In the sunlight there was not a place
around camp which did not picture her lithe, vigorous body, her dark,
thoughtful eyes, her eloquent, resolute lips, and the smile that was so
sweet and strong. At night she was there like a slender specter, pacing
beside him under the moaning pines. Every camp-fire held in its heart
the glowing white radiance of her spirit.

Nature had taught Dale to love solitude and silence, but love itself
taught him their meaning. Solitude had been created for the eagle on his
crag, for the blasted mountain fir, lonely and gnarled on its peak, for
the elk and the wolf. But it had not been intended for man. And to
live always in the silence of wild places was to become obsessed with
self--to think and dream--to be happy, which state, however pursued by
man, was not good for him. Man must be given imperious longings for the
unattainable.

It needed, then, only the memory of an unattainable woman to render
solitude passionately desired by a man, yet almost unendurable. Dale was
alone with his secret; and every pine, everything in that park saw him
shaken and undone.

In the dark, pitchy deadness of night, when there was no wind and the
cold on the peaks had frozen the waterfall, then the silence seemed
insupportable. Many hours that should have been given to slumber were
paced out under the cold, white, pitiless stars, under the lonely pines.

Dale's memory betrayed him, mocked his restraint, cheated him of
any peace; and his imagination, sharpened by love, created pictures,
fancies, feelings, that drove him frantic.

He thought of Helen Rayner's strong, shapely brown hand. In a thousand
different actions it haunted him. How quick and deft in camp-fire tasks!
how graceful and swift as she plaited her dark hair! how tender and
skilful in its ministration when one of his pets had been injured! how
eloquent when pressed tight against her breast in a moment of fear on
the dangerous heights! how expressive of unutterable things when laid on
his arm!

Dale saw that beautiful hand slowly creep up his arm, across his
should