th is your own, and your talent is your own;
that you're all there, and there's no sag in you." She stood for a
moment as if she were tortured by uncertainty, then turned suddenly back
to him. "Don't talk about these things any more now," she entreated. "It
isn't that I want to keep anything from you. The trouble is that I've
got nothing to keep--except (you know as well as I) that feeling. I told
you about it in Chicago once. But it always makes me unhappy to talk
about it. It will spoil the day. Will you go for a climb with me?" She
held out her hands with a smile so eager that it made Ottenburg feel how
much she needed to get away from herself.

He sprang up and caught the hands she put out so cordially, and stood
swinging them back and forth. "I won't tease you. A word's enough to me.
But I love it, all the same. Understand?" He pressed her hands and
dropped them. "Now, where are you going to drag me?"

"I want you to drag me. Over there, to the other houses. They are more
interesting than these." She pointed across the gorge to the row of
white houses in the other cliff. "The trail is broken away, but I got up
there once. It's possible. You have to go to the bottom of the canyon,
cross the creek, and then go up hand-over-hand."

Ottenburg, lounging against the sunny wall, his hands in the pockets of
his jacket, looked across at the distant dwellings. "It's an awful
climb," he sighed, "when I could be perfectly happy here with my pipe.
However--" He took up his stick and hat and followed Thea down the water
trail. "Do you climb this path every day? You surely earn your bath. I
went down and had a look at your pool the other afternoon. Neat place,
with all those little cottonwoods. Must be very becoming."

"Think so?" Thea said over her shoulder, as she swung round a turn.

"Yes, and so do you, evidently. I'm becoming expert at reading your
meaning in your back. I'm behind you so much on these single-foot
trails. You don't wear stays, do you?"

"Not here."

"I wouldn't, anywhere, if I were you. They will make you less elastic.
The side muscles get flabby. If you go in for opera, there's a fortune
in a flexible body. Most of the German singers are clumsy, even when
they're well set up."

Thea switched a PINON branch back at him. "Oh, I'll never get fat! That
I can promise you."

Fred smiled, looking after her. "Keep that promise, no matter how many
others you break," he drawled.

The upward climb, after th