of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and
warped and magnified. The babble of the water which had been music to
King was to her a chorus of jeering voices; the wind in the pines an
eerie moaning as of lost spirits wailing; the trees themselves, merging
with the dusk, were brooding, shadowy giant things which she suddenly
both feared and hated; the cliffs rising against the sky loomed so near
and so gigantically tall that she felt as though they were pressing in
upon her to suffocate her, to crush her, to annihilate her. The world
was turning black with the night; the night rushed, treading out the
last gleam of sunlight; even the one star which she had glimpsed through
her tears impressed her only with its remoteness. She was frightened;
not because of any physical violence, for Mark King stood between her
and that. But of vague horrors. She thought of San Francisco; of her own
bright room there; of the lights in the streets, of pedestrians and
motors and street-cars filling that other steel-canoned wilderness with
familiar noises. And somehow, San Francisco seemed further away,
immeasurably further away, than that one remote star blazing through the
vastness of space.

"A cup of coffee and a bit of supper," King said gently. "You'll feel a
lot better."

She rose wearily and followed him. Without a word she dropped down
beside his banquet, putting out a listless hand to her tin cup. The
firelight upon her face showed him her thoughtful eyes; but they were
turned not toward him but toward the bed of coals. He had anticipated
her lively surprise at the trout; she pushed the brown morsel aside,
saying absently:

"I am not hungry. It was good of you to go to all of this trouble. I am
afraid I am not much of a camper." She forced the shadow of a smile with
the admission.

"Tuckered out," he thought as he looked into her face across which light
and shadow flickered as flame and smoke in the camp-fire came and went
fitfully, twisted by the evening breeze. "Clean tuckered out."

Gloria, feeling his gaze so steady upon her, turned her eyes toward his,
eyes heavy and sober with her drooping spirit. As the flames frolicked
about the pitch-pine he had tossed to the coals, he saw the traces of
tears. He said nothing, supposing that he understood; he but strove the
harder to be good to her, to share with her some of that rare joy
filling his own heart. He sought with unobtrusive tenderness to
antic