t Estes village the blond god handed her over to a twin charioteer who
would drive her up the mountain road to the Inn that nestled in a valley
nine thousand feet up the mountain. It was a drive Fanny never forgot.
Fenger, Ted, Haynes-Cooper, her work, her plans, her ambitions, seemed
to dwindle to puny insignificance beside the vast grandeur that unfolded
before her at every fresh turn in the road. Up they went, and up, and
up, and the air was cold, but without a sting in it. It was dark when
the lights of the Inn twinkled out at them. The door was thrown open
as they swung up the curve to the porch. A great log fire glowed in the
fireplace. The dining room held only a dozen people, or thereabouts--a
dozen weary, healthy people, in corduroys and sweaters and boots, whose
cleanly talk was all about climbing and fishing, and horseback rides and
trails. And it was fried chicken night at the Inn. Fanny thought she was
too utterly tired to eat, until she began to eat, and then she thought
she was too hungry ever to stop. After dinner she sat, for a moment,
before the log fire in the low-ceilinged room, with its log walls, its
rustic benches, and its soft-toned green and brown cushions. She forgot
to be unhappy. She forgot to be anything but deliciously drowsy.
And presently she climbed the winding stair whose newel post was a
fire-marked tree trunk, richly colored, and curiously twisted. And so
to her lamp-lighted room, very small, very clean, very quiet. She opened
her window and looked out at the towering mass that was Long's Peak, and
at the stars, and she heard the busy little brook that scurries through
the Inn yard on its way from the mountain to the valley. She undressed
quickly, and crept into bed, meaning to be very, very miserable indeed.
And the next thing she knew it was morning. A blue and gold October
morning. And the mountains!--but there is no describing a mountain.
One uses words, and they are futile. Fanny viewed them again, from her
window, between pauses in dressing. And she meant, privately, to be
miserable again. But she could only think, somehow, of bacon and eggs,
and coffee, and muffins.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Heyl's place. Fanny stood before it, key in hand (she had found it
in the mail box, tied to a string), and she had a curious and restful
feeling, as if she had come home, after long wanderings. She smiled,
whimsically, and repeated her lesson to herself:

"The fire's laid in the fireplace