e--the Olympics, two-score
miles away.

Up there, one could camp, with a boy in a deteriorated sweater singing
as he watched the coffee----

Hastily she looked to the left, across the city, with its bright new
skyscrapers, its shining cornices and masses of ranked windows, and the
exclamation-point of the "tallest building outside of New York"--far
livelier than her own rusty Brooklyn. Beyond the city was a dun cloud,
but as she stared, far up in the cloud something crept out of the vapor,
and hung there like a dull full moon, aloof, majestic, overwhelming, and
she realized that she was beholding the peak of Mount Rainier, with the
city at its foot like white quartz pebbles at the base of a tower.

A landing-stage for angels, she reflected.

It did seem larger than dressing-tables and velvet hangings and scented
baths.

But she dragged herself from the enticing path of that thought, and
sighed wretchedly, "Oh, yes, he would appreciate Rainier, but how--how
would he manage a grape-fruit? I mustn't be a fool! I mustn't!" She saw
that Mrs. Gilson was peeping at her, and she made herself say adequate
things about the View before she fled inside--fled from her sputtering
inquiring self.

In the afternoon they drove to Capitol Hill; they dropped in at various
pretty houses and met the sort of people Claire knew back home. Between
people they had Views; and the sensible Miss Boltwood, making a
philosophic discovery, announced to herself, "After all, I've seen just
as much from this limousine as I would from a bone-breaking Teal bug.
Silly to make yourself miserable to see things. Oh yes, I will go
wandering some more, but not like a hobo. But---- What can I say to him?
Good heavens, he may be here any time now, with our car. Oh,
why--why--why was I insane on that station platform?"

CHAPTER XXV

THE ABYSSINIAN PRINCE

Snoqualmie Pass lies among mountains prickly with rocks and burnt
stumps, but the road is velvet, with broad saucer curves; and to Milt it
was pure beauty, it was release from life, to soar up coaxing inclines
and slip down easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me,"
he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure
whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise,
effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He
suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep
symbolized his own new life.

So he came to La