, she could not quite forgive
him.

CHAPTER X

SAVINE'S CONFIDENCE

Despite his employer's invitation Thurston did not return to High
Maples at the end of the week. The rock-cutting engrossed all his
attention, and he was conscious that it might be desirable to allow
Miss Savine's indignation to cool. He had thought of her often since
the day that she gave him the dollar, and, at first still smarting
under the memory of another woman's treachery, had tried to analyze his
feelings regarding her. The result was not very definite, though he
decided that he had never really loved Millicent, and was very certain
now that she had wasted little affection upon him. One evening at
Graham's ranch when they had stood silently together under the early
stars, he had become suddenly conscious of the all-important fact, that
his life would be empty without Helen Savine, and that of all the women
whom he had met she alone could guide and raise him towards a higher
plane.

It was characteristic of Geoffrey Thurston that the determination to
win her in spite of every barrier of wealth and rank came with the
revelation, and that, at the same time counting the cost, he realized
that he must first bid boldly for a name and station, and with all
patience bide his time. A more cold-blooded man might have abandoned
the quest as hopeless at the first, and one more impulsive might have
ruined his chances by rashness, but Geoffrey united the characteristics
of the reckless Thurstons with his mother's cool North Country
canniness.

It therefore happened that Savine, irritated by a journalistic
reference to the tardiness of that season's road-making, went down to
see how the work entrusted to Geoffrey was progressing. He was
accompanied by his daughter, who desired to visit the wife of a
prosperous rancher. It was towards noon of a hot day when they
alighted from their horses in the mouth of a gorge that wound inland
from the margin of a lake. No breath of wind ruffled the steely
surface of the lake. White boulder and somber fir branch slept
motionless, reflected in the crystal depths of the water, and lines of
great black cedars, that kept watch from the ridge above, stood mute
beneath the sun.

As they picked their path carefully through the debris littering an
ugly rent in the rock, where perspiring men were toiling hard with pick
and drill, they came upon Thurston before he was aware of them.
Geoffrey stood with a heavy