liffs,
of the nearer mountains. These were majestic, overpowering, but plainly of
this earth, unlike the pure, white summits that seemed unreal, impossible
in their beauty.

"Do come and look, Fred," said the girl aloud. "I've never seen the Snows
so clearly."

She spoke to the solitary occupant of the dining-room of the bungalow. The
young man at the breakfast table answered laughingly:

"I don't want to look at those confounded hills, Sis. I've seen them,
nothing but them, all through these long months, until I begin to hate the
sight of them."

"Oh, but do come, dear!" she pleaded. "Kinchinjunga has never seemed so
beautiful as it does this morning. And it looks so near. Who could believe
that it was all those miles away?"

With an air of pretended boredom and martyr-like resignation, her brother
put down his coffee-cup and came out on the verandah.

"Isn't it like Fairyland?" said the girl in an awed voice.

He put his arm affectionately round her, as he replied:

"Then it's where you belong, kiddie, for you look like a fairy this
morning."

The hackneyed compliment, unusual from the lips of a brother, was not
far-fetched. If a dainty little figure, an exquisitely pretty dimpled
face, a shell-pink complexion, violet eyes with long, thick lashes, and
naturally wavy golden hair be the hallmarks of the fairies, then Noreen
Daleham might claim to be one. Her face in repose had a somewhat sad
expression, due to the pathetic droop of the corners of her little
mouth and a wistful look in her eyes that made most men instinctively
desire to caress and console her. But the sadness and the wistfulness
were unconscious and untrue, for the girl was of a sunny and happy
disposition. And the men that desired to pet her were kept at a distance
by her natural self-respect, which made them respect her, too.

She was, perhaps, somewhat unusual in her generation in that she did not
indulge in flirtations and would have strongly objected to being the object
of promiscuous caresses and light lovemaking. Her innate purity and
innocence kept such things at a distance from her. It never occurred to her
that a girl might indulge in a hundred flirtations without reproach.
Without being sentimental she had her own inward, unexpressed feelings of
romance and vague dreams of Love and a Lover--but not of loves and lovers
in the plural.

No one so far had shattered her belief in the chivalrous feeling of respect
of the other sex for