If it had not been for the episode of Mrs. Hilliard and Mr. May, Nick might have felt tempted to try his fate, and dare the dash across the “dead line,” that evening of moonlight on the mountain-top.  But it might, he thought, seem like presuming on what had happened; and having come, more or less safely, round an awkward turning, he was thankful to find himself on a narrow ledge of security.  The moonshine, that turned mountains to marble and sky to pearl, was cold as it was pure; and in its bleaching radiance Angela seemed less woman than spirit.  He dared not let that angel know how hot was his heart.

“I’ll wait till we’re among the Big Trees,” he said to himself.  “They’re great, as great as the mountains in their way, but they’re friendly and kind, as if they might help.  That’s where I’ll risk it all:  in the Mariposa Forest, the place I like better than any other in the world.  So whatever happens, we shall have seen the best there is together, and all that will be mine to remember, if I lose everything else.”

The next day was a day of forest and flowers.

They were not travelling this time in an ordinary stage, for Nick had secured a buckboard for themselves alone, with a driver who knew the country, with its beauties and legends, as well as he knew his big muscular gray horses.

Those never-ending, cathedral-forests of America’s.  National Park were wilder than any that Angela had imagined.  She hardly believed that the great redwoods which she was to see to-morrow could be grander than these immense fluted columns of cedar and pine.  In the arms of the biggest and most virile trees, many slender sapling shapes, storm-broken, or tired of facing life alone, lay helplessly.  But the driver’s heart was proof against a romantic view of this situation, as sketched by Angela.  “It oughtn’t to be allowed,” he said, sternly.  “Think of the danger in fire.  That’s what is called by the foresters, ‘extra hazard,’ as I guess Mr. Hilliard knows.”

Oh, yes, Nick knew.  But, seeing with Angela’s eyes, he envied the lover-trees their peril.  He, a lonely tree, had already taken fire, but he would gladly risk the “extra hazard.”  What if—­and his thoughts ran ahead to the day in the redwoods, that day set apart by his mind as the clou of the excursion—­what if the thing her eyes seemed to say to him should be true?  What if she could love him, and give up her world, that world which he saw vaguely, as a dazzling vision?  What if, to-morrow, she too should know the thrill of “extra hazard”?

No wonder, then, as he dreamed, that the glacier meadows encircled by green walls of forest primeval should seem like fairy rings, visible to mortal eyes only as a special privilege.  In the sunlight-gold, the sheets of azaleas, cyclamen, and violets, were embroidered tapestries of pink and purple; the bright rivulets of melting snow that bathed the wild flowers’ roots became a network of diamonds.