The road did not climb up now, but led along the side of the mountain.  Through the dense woods the sky-line, first guessed at, then clearly seen between the thick-standing tree-trunks, sank lower and lower.  “We are approaching,” said Page, motioning in front of them, “the jumping-off place.”  They passed from the tempered green light of the wood and emerged upon a great windy plateau, carpeted thickly with deep green moss, flanked right and left with two mountain peaks and roofed over with an expanse of brilliant summer sky.  Before them the plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, with an indescribable bold look of great altitude; but close to them at one side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock and beyond this a sheer descent.  The eye leaped down abrupt slopes of forest to the valley they had left, now a thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic blues and greens, tremulous with heat.  On the noble height where they stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of mist-blue peaks beyond the valley.

Sylvia was greatly moved.  “Oh, what a wonderful spot!” she said under her breath.  “I never dreamed that anything could be—­” She burst out suddenly, scarcely knowing what she said, “Oh, I wish my mother could be here!” She had not thought of her mother for days, and now hardly knew that she had spoken her name.  Standing there, poised above the dark richness of the valley, her heart responding to those vast airy spaces by an upward-soaring sweep, the quick tears of ecstasy were in her eyes.  She had entirely forgotten herself and her companion.  He did not speak.  His eyes were on her face.

She moved to the parapet of rock and leaned against it.  The action brought her to herself and she flashed around on Page a grateful smile.  “It’s a very beautiful spot you’ve brought me to,” she said.

He came up beside her now.  “It’s a favorite of mine,” he said quietly.  “If I come straight through the woods it’s not more than a mile from my farm.  I come up here for the sunsets sometimes—­or for dawn.”

Sylvia found the idea almost too much for her. “Oh!” she cried—­“dawn here!”

“Yes,” said the man, smiling faintly.  “It’s all of that!”

In her life of plains and prairies Sylvia had never been upon a great height, had never looked down and away upon such reaches of far valley, such glorious masses of sunlit mountain; and beyond them, giving wings to the imagination, were mountains, more mountains, distant, incalculably distant, with unseen hollow valleys between; and finally, mountains again, half cloud, melting indistinguishably into the vaporous haze of the sky.  Above her, sheer and vast, lay Hemlock Mountain, all its huge bulk a sleeping, passionless calm.  Beyond was the solemnity of Windward Mountain’s concave shell, full to the brim with brooding blue shadows, a well of mystery in that day of wind-blown sunshine.  Beneath her, above her, before her,