wandered off again. They sat side by side, their backs
against the cabin-wall, the meadow before them, sloping to the lake; he
smoked, and she was silent. The sun had risen. It inundated the western
slopes with a cascade of light; here and there on the crest glaciers
flashed signals; far to the west the plain palpitated liquidly; and
above, the sky domed very high, a miracle of pellucid azure. A big sigh
escaped Charles-Norton, with a blue wafture of smoke. "Isn't this
beautiful?" he said; "isn't it beautiful?"

She said nothing, and so he repeated, "Isn't it beautiful?" And then,
curious of her silence, he turned to her. She was looking about her, at
the trees, at the lake, and the great crags above, and as she looked,
with an unconscious movement, she withdrew closer to him. "It's awfully
big," she said, and her voice was almost a whisper.

"It's big with beauty," he said. "Look at the lake," he went on,
detailing with the pride of a suburban proprietor; "isn't it silvery and
fresh and clean!"

"It's cold, isn't it?" said Dolly.

"And the crest up there. Look at it. It is sculptured--domes, spires,
castles. And those gothic arches. They are like joined hands; the granite
prays. And see the glisten of that glacier in the haze, like a star in
the veil of a bride! It's all beautiful!"

"They're terribly big mountains, aren't they?" said Dolly.

"See the plain away down there. It seems to heave slowly, like the flood
after the rain had ceased."

"Do people live there?" asked Dolly.

"And the sky; did you ever see such sky! And the meadow here, how fresh
and lush; and the pines, and the cabin, and the lake--isn't it all quiet
and peaceful?"

She was silent, and after a while he turned to her. A tear was trembling
at the end of one of her long lashes. "Goosie," she whispered, and she
snuggled up against him; "Goosie, isn't it a bit--lonely here?"

"_We_ won't find it lonely," he answered stoutly, and drew her close
within his arms.

The day drawled on, slowly and deliciously. "Let's take a little walk,"
said Dolly, after a while.

"All right," said Charles-Norton, "I guess I still know how. I haven't
walked much lately."

"I suppose not," said Dolly, hesitatingly. They were going side by side
across the meadow, and Charles-Norton could feel her looking at him out
of the corner of her eye. "I suppose--you have been--doing something
else."

"Yes," laughed Charles-Norton, flushing a bit; "yes--something else.