o his rescue. He made her side of the table in two
strides (your favorite film star couldn't have done it better), put his
two hands on her shoulders and neatly shifted the bowed head from the
cold, hard surface of the table top to the warm, rough, tobacco-scented
comfort of his coat. It rested there quite naturally. Just as naturally
Fanny's arm crept up, and about his neck. So they remained for a moment,
until he bent so that his lips touched her hair. Her head came up at
that, sharply, so that it bumped his chin. They both laughed, looking
into each other's eyes, but at what they saw there they stopped laughing
and were serious.

"Dear," said Heyl. "Dearest." The lids drooped over Fanny's eyes. "Look
at me," said Heyl. So she tried to lift them again, bravely, and could
not. At that he bent his head and kissed Fanny Brandeis in the way a
woman wants to be kissed for the first time by the man she loves. It
hurt her lips, that kiss, and her teeth, and the back of her neck, and
it left her breathless, and set things whirling. When she opened her
eyes (they shut them at such times) he kissed her again, very tenderly,
this time, and lightly, and reassuringly. She returned that kiss, and,
strangely enough, it was the one that stayed in her memory long, long
after the other had faded.

"Oh, Clancy, I've made such a mess of it all. Such a miserable mess.
The little girl in the red tam was worth ten of me. I don't see how you
can--care for me."

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world," said Heyl, "and the most
beautiful and splendid."

He must have meant it, for he was looking down at her as he said it, and
we know that the skin had been peeled off her nose by the mountain winds
and sun, that her lips were cracked and her cheeks rough, and that she
was red-eyed and worn-looking. And she must have believed him, for she
brought his cheek down to hers with such a sigh of content, though she
said, "But are we at all suited to each other?"

"Probably not," Heyl answered, briskly. "That's why we're going to be
so terrifically happy. Some day I'll be passing the Singer building, and
I'll glance up at it and think how pitiful it would look next to Long's
Peak. And then I'll be off, probably, to these mountains."

"Or some day," Fanny returned, "we'll be up here, and I'll remember,
suddenly, how Fifth Avenue looks on a bright afternoon between four and
five. And I'll be off, probably, to the Grand Central station."

And