were taken from her forehead, in keeping with
Jack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which is
so tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and it
breaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherent
whole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must be
glittering and immeasurable.

"But Little Rivers is best," she added after a time, speaking not to him,
but devoutly to the oasis of green.

In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch the
roofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet so
diminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set in
the palm of the hand.

Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech. A misplaced word might
send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free
from the grasp. Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study,
undreamed of in all his flights of fancy.

"It is my last view," he began. "I have said all my good-bys in town. I
am going."

Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news. At least now
she would look around at him. He would no longer have to talk to a
profile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thing
of his life. But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclination
of her head.

"Yes," she told the horizon; and after a little silence added: "The time
has come to play another part?"

She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the old
banter over the wall. She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace.

"I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part. But I am
not my own master. I must go. I--"

"Back to your millions!" She finished the sentence for him.

"Then you--you knew! You knew!" But his exclamation of astonishment did
not move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor.

"Yes," she went on. "Father told me about your millions last night. He
has known from the first who you were."

"And he told no one else in Little Rivers? He never mentioned it to me or
even to you before!"

"Why should he when you did not mention it yourself? His omission was
natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of the
custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is no
standard except the conduct of the present!"

And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation.

"He did not even tell you un