ternal and
vital ones, all of Gratton's futile trickery was as though it had never
been. She was calling to him again, urging him to clamber up the cliff,
bidding him hurry before he was seen.

"How came you here?" was all that he could find words for. "You! And
_here_!"

She would tell him everything! But he must not tarry down there. He must
make haste----

Her words cleared his bewilderment away; he glanced again over his
shoulder. The gorge was empty of other human presence. He looked back up
at her. And then, before her eager eyes, he slumped down where he stood,
lying in the snow.

"I can't." She heard his voice as across a distance ten times that which
separated them. In it was bleak despair. "I've gone through hell
already. I am--nearly dead. I couldn't climb up there. I----Oh, my God,
why did I ever come into this inferno!"

She begged, she urged. But he only turned a white face up to her and lay
where he had fallen, his body shaking visibly, what with the strain he
had put upon it and the emotions which only his own soul knew.

"But it is so easy," she cried to him, forgetful of her now terror at
mounting up here. "I have done it. Twice. I will show you just which
way, where to set your feet."

"I can't," he said miserably. "It was all I could do to get this far.
I--I think I am dying----"

Again and again she pleaded with him. But he had either reached the
limit of his physical endurance or, shaken and unnerved, he had not the
courage to attempt the steep climb. He lay still; his eyes were shut,
and to Gloria, too, came the swift fear that the man might be dying.

"I am coming to you!" she called.

She began making the hazardous descent. She did not take time to ask
herself if she could make it; she knew only that she must. She set foot
on the narrow, sloping ledge outside, brushing off the snow with her
boot, clinging with her hands to a splinter of granite, feeling her way
cautiously, careful to move inch by inch along the way down which she
had gone twice with Mark King. Her fingers, already cold when she
started, went numb; they were at all times either in pits and pockets of
snow or gripping the rough stone that was ice-cold. Painfully but
steadily she climbed down and down. She strove not to look down; she had
no eyes for Gratton, who now sat upright, his jaw still sagging, and
marvelled at her. A dozen times he was prepared to see her slip and
fall.

After a weary time she came to the ba