that impassiveness, so fascinating in the past. In
its place had come an allusive, restless something, to be found in
words of troublesome vagueness, in variable moods, in an increased
sensitiveness of mind and an undercurrent of emotional bitterness--she
was emotional at last! She puzzled me greatly, for I saw two spirits in
her: one pitiless as of old; the other human, anxious, not unlovely.

At length we became silent, and walked so side by side for a time. Then,
with that old delightful egotism and selfishness--delightful in its very
daring--she said: "Well, amuse me!"

"And is it still the end of your existence," I rejoined--"to be amused?"

"What is there else to do?" she replied with raillery.

"Much. To amuse others, for instance; to regard human beings as
something more than automata."

"Has Mr. Roscoe made you a preaching curate? I helped Amshar at the
Tanks."

"One does not forget that. Yet you pushed Amshar with your foot."

"Did you expect me to kiss the black coward? Then, I nursed Mr. Roscoe
in his illness."

"And before that?"

"And before that I was born into the world, and grew to years of
knowledge, and learned what fools we mortals be, and--and there--is that
Mr. Devlin's big sawmill?"

We had suddenly emerged on a shelf of the mountainside, and were looking
down into the Long Cloud Valley. It was a noble sight. Far to the north
were foothills covered with the glorious Norfolk pine, rising in steppes
till they seemed to touch white plateaus of snow, which again billowed
to glacier fields whose austere bosoms man's hand had never touched; and
these suddenly lifted up huge, unapproachable shoulders, crowned with
majestic peaks that took in their teeth the sun, the storm, and the
whirlwinds of the north, never changing countenance from day to year and
from year to age.

Facing this long line of glory, running irregularly on towards that
sea where Franklin and M'Clintock led their gay adventurers,--the bold
ships,--was another shore, not so high or superior, but tall and sombre
and warm, through whose endless coverts of pine there crept and idled
the generous Chinook winds--the soothing breath of the friendly Pacific.
Between these shores the Long Cloud River ran; now boisterous, now soft,
now wallowing away through long channels, washing gorges always dark as
though shaded by winter, and valleys always green as favoured by summer.
Creeping along a lofty narrow path upon that farther shore w