“Put him in charge,” laughed Karl.  “The answer’s easy.  Treat him like a fellow-man.  Don’t annoy him by an exhibition of your useless virtues.”

“I never thought of that,” said Kate.

They turned their backs on the straggling town and faced the peaks.  Presently they skirted the Williston River which thundered among boulders and raged on toward the low-lying valley.  From above, the roar of the pines came to them, reverberant and melancholy.

“What sounds!  What sounds!” cried Kate.

“The mountains breathing,” answered Wander.

He drove well, and he knew the road.  It was a dangerous road, which, ever ascending, skirted sharp declivities and rounded buttressed rocks.  Kate, prairie-reared, could not “escape the inevitable thrill,” but she showed, and perhaps felt, no fear.  She let the matter rest with him—­this man with great shoulders and firm hands, who knew the primitive art of “waiting on himself.”  Their brief speech sufficed them for a time, and now they sat silent, well content.  The old, tormenting question as to his relations with Honora did not intrude itself.  It was swept out of sight like flotsam in the plenteous stream of present content.

They swung upon a purple mesa, and in the distance Kate saw a light which she felt was shining from the window of his home.

“It’s just as I thought it would be,” she said.

“Perhaps you are just the way it thought you would be,” he replied.  “Perhaps the soul of a place waits and watches for the right person, just as we human beings wander about searching for the right spot.”

“I’m suited,” affirmed Kate.  “I hope the mesa is.”

“I know it well and I can answer for it.”

The road continued to mount; they entered the pinon grove and rode in aromatic dusk for a while, and when they emerged they were at the doorway.

He lifted her down and held her with a gesture as if he had something to say.

“It’s about my letter,” he ventured.  “You knew very well it wasn’t that I didn’t want you to write.  But my life was getting tangled—­I wasn’t willing to involve you in any way in the debris.  I couldn’t be sure that letters sent me would always reach my hands.  Worst of all, I accused myself of unworthiness.  I do so still.”

“I’m not one who worries much about worthiness or unworthiness,” she said.  “Each of us is worthy and unworthy.  But I thought—­”

“What?”

“I was confused.  Honora said I was to congratulate you—­and her.  I didn’t know—­”

He stared incredulously.

“You didn’t know—­” He broke off, too, then laughed shortly.  “I wish you had known,” he added.  “I would like to think that you never could misunderstand.”

She felt herself rebuked.  He opened the door for her and she stepped for the first time across the threshold of his house.

* * * * *