England, they were beautiful, with their vistas of
snow-capped mountains and the sea.

"But you are not a farmer," she objected.

"No; mining's my vocation and it keeps me busy. In the city, I'm at work
long before they think of opening their London offices, and it's
generally midnight before I've finished worrying engineers and
contractors at their homes or hotels. In the wilds, we're more or less
continuously grappling with rock or treacherous gravel, or out on the
prospecting trail, while the northern summer lasts; it's then light most
of the night. In the winter, we sometimes sleep in the snow, with the
thermometer near the bottom of its register."

Millicent shivered a little, wondering uneasily why he had taken the
trouble to impress this upon her. It was, she thought, certainly not to
show what he was capable of.

"Are you glad to go back, or do you dread it?" she asked.

"I don't dread it--it's my life, and things may be easier by and by.
Still, I'm very loath to go."

Millicent could believe that. His troubled expression confirmed it; and
she was strangely pleased. She had never had a companion in whom she
could have so much confidence, and she had already recognized that she
was, in one sense of the word, growing fond of him. Indeed, she had begun
to be curious about the feeling and to wonder whether it stopped quite
short at liking.

"Well," she told him, "I'm glad that you asked me to come with you. I
think I was one of your first friends and I'm pleased that you should
wish to spend part of your last day in my company."

"You come first of all!"

"That's flattering," she smiled. "What about Nasmyth?"

"An unusually fine man, but he has his limits. You have none."

"I'm not sure I quite understand you."

"Then," he explained seriously, "what I think I mean is this--you're one
of the people who somehow contrive to meet any call that is made on them.
You would never sit down, helpless, in a trying situation; you'd find
some way of getting over the difficulties. It's a gift more useful than
genius."

"You're rating me too highly," she answered with some embarrassment. "You
admitted that you thought my place was here--the inference was that I
shouldn't fit into a different one."

"No," he corrected her; "you'd adapt yourself to changed conditions; but
that wouldn't prevent your suffering in the process. Indeed, I think
people of your kind often suffer more than the others."

He was to some ext