. That's one thing you'll have to get used
to out here, Stell--I mean, that what vices men have are all on the
surface. We don't get drunk secretly at the club and sneak home in a
taxi. Oh, well, we'll cross the bridge when we come to it. Matt may not
break out for weeks."

He yawned openly.

"Sleepy?" Stella inquired.

"I get up every morning between four and five," he replied. "And I can
go to sleep any time after supper."

"I think I'll take a walk along the beach," she said abruptly.

"All right. Don't hike into the woods and get lost, though."

She circled the segment of bay, climbed a low, rocky point, and found
herself a seat on a fallen tree. Outside the lake heaved uneasily, still
dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the southerly gale. At her feet
surge after surge hammered the gravelly shore. Far through the woods
behind her the wind whistled and hummed among swaying tops of giant fir
and cedar. There was a heady freshness in that rollicking wind, an odor
resinous and pungent mingled with that elusive smell of green growing
stuff along the shore. Beginning where she sat, tree trunks rose in
immense brown pillars, running back in great forest naves, shadowy
always, floored with green moss laid in a rich, soft carpet for the
wood-sprites' feet. Far beyond the long gradual lower slope lifted a
range of saw-backed mountains, the sanctuary of wild goat and bear, and
across the rolling lake lifted other mountains sheer from the water's
edge, peaks rising above timber-line in majestic contour, their pinnacle
crests grazing the clouds that scudded before the south wind.

Beauty? Yes. A wild, imposing grandeur that stirred some responsive
chord in her. If only one could live amid such surrounding with a
contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of
its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that
had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing
factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready
standards of the woods with much equanimity--not as she had that day
seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily
life, and all the brief span of her years had gone to forming habits of
speech and thought and manner diametrically opposed to what she had so
far encountered.

She nursed her chin in her hand and pondered this. She could not see how
it was to be avoided. She was there, and perforce she must stay