pride the place where the
Grand Duchess had fainted beneath the terrors of the line. With only the
railing of their little platform between them and the abyss, they ran
over ravines hundreds of feet deep--the valley, a thousand feet sheer,
below. And in that valley, not a sign of house, of path; only black
impenetrable forest--huge cedars and Douglas pines, filling up the
bottoms, choking the river with their debris, climbing up the further
sides, towards the gleaming line of peaks.

"It is a nightmare!" said Delaine involuntarily, looking round him.

Elizabeth laughed, a bright colour in her cheeks. Again the wilderness
ran through her blood, answering the challenge of Nature. Faint!--she
was more inclined to sing or shout. And with the exhilaration, physical
and mental, that stole upon her, there mingled secretly, the first
thrill of passion she had ever known. Anderson sat beside her, once more
silent after his burst of talk. She was vividly conscious of him--of his
bare curly head--of certain lines of fatigue and suffering in the
bronzed face. And it was conveyed to her that, although he was clearly
preoccupied and sad, he was yet conscious of her in the same way. Once,
as they were passing the highest bridge of all, where, carried on a
great steel arch, that has replaced the older trestles, the rails run
naked and gleaming, without the smallest shred of wall or parapet,
across a gash in the mountain up which they were creeping, and at a
terrific height above the valley, Elizabeth, who was sitting with her
back to the engine, bent suddenly to one side, leaning over the little
railing and looking ahead--that she might if possible get a clearer
sight of Mount Macdonald, the giant at whose feet lies Roger's Pass.
Suddenly, as her weight pressed against the ironwork where only that
morning a fastening had been mended, she felt a grip on her arm. She
drew back, startled.

"I beg your pardon!" said Anderson, smiling, but a trifle paler than
before. "I'm not troubled with nerves for myself, but--"

He did not complete the sentence, and Elizabeth, could find nothing to
say.

"Why, Elizabeth's not afraid!" cried Philip, scornfully.

"This is Roger's Pass, and here we are at the top of the Selkirks," said
Anderson, rising. "The train will wait here some twenty minutes. Perhaps
you would like to walk about."

They descended, all but Philip, who grumbled at the cold, wrapped
himself in a rug inside the car, and summone