she
speed me away with a smile, instead of that look. Why can't she be happy
in her own way down there, and let me be happy up here? Why, why, why?"

He was passing just then a deep gorge, blue beneath him. From it his
question reascended to him, tenuous and fluttering, like a lost bird on
uncertain wings. "Why--why--why?"

"She looks at me--as if I were a murderer. Just because I want to fly.
Just because I have wings. Just because everything in me says, Fly! And I
have to carry that look around with me all day long, just like a net,
just like a net of crape. Dam!"

"Dam!" said the profundities.

Charles-Norton evidently had arrived at the self-pitying stage--which was
a bad sign, if he only had known it; which showed a certain weakening of
his moral fiber. He fought on, though. Resolutely he continued to refuse
to notice the daily little black smudge upon Dolly's cheek. She was more
submissive and dolorous than ever. She had made him, with blankets, a
union-suit that buttoned ingeniously about the roots of his wings; he put
it on every morning, but hid it behind a rock till night as soon as he
was out of sight.

But the very elements, the perversity of matter, seemed against
Charles-Norton. "There's no more flour, Goosie," said Dolly one morning.

Charles-Norton did not catch the significance of this remark right away.
Perched on one foot, just in the act of taking wing, he had become
absorbed in the examination of a fluffy and cold little white object
which had just then settled upon his nose. He looked at it close as it
disappeared between his fingers in a silver trickle. It was a snow-flake.
He glanced upward; the sky was very gray.

"Goosie, the flour is gone," repeated Dolly.

Charles-Norton came back to earth. "Well, we'll have to buy some more,"
he said, again preparing for flight.

Dolly was silent, evidently considering this remark. "Have you--have you
any more--money?" she asked at length, hesitatingly.

Charles-Norton dropped his wings. "No," he said. "No, that I haven't--not
a cent. It's--it's gone. Have you?"

"_I_ haven't any," said Dolly. Her eyes were very big.

Charles-Norton stood there motionless a while, a bit disturbed. Then his
lower jaw advanced; he shrugged his shoulders: "Well--I'll see about it;
to-morrow," he said airily, and was off.

But he didn't see about anything "to-morrow" or after. He had a fine time
that day. A snow-flurry was passing down the Sierra, and he went with