“Am I glad?” said Nick, and laughed at her softly.  “I’m the happiest man on earth.  I shall go Home now without a pang, and so will you.  We have got to feather the nest, you know.  That’ll be fun, eh, sweetheart?”

Her eyes answered him more convincingly than any words.  They seemed to have caught some of the sunshine that made the world around them so glorious.

Some time elapsed before she remembered the neglected correspondence.  Time was of no account up there among the mountains.

“The other letter, Nick, you didn’t tell me about it.  I fancied you might have heard from Will Musgrave.”

“So I have,” said Nick.  “You had better read it.  There’s a line for you inside.  It’s all right.  Daisy has got a little girl, both doing splendidly; Daisy very happy, Will nearly off his head with joy.”

Muriel was already deep in Will’s ecstatic letter.  She read it with smiling lips and tearful eyes.  At the end in pencil she found the line that was for her.

“Tell Muriel that all’s well with me, and I want you both for Christmas.—­Daisy.”

Muriel looked up.  “I promised to spend Christmas with them, Nick.”

Nick smiled upon her quizzically.  “By a strange coincidence, darling, so did I. I should think under the circumstances we might go together, shouldn’t you?”

She drew his hand to her cheek.  “We will go to them for Christmas then.  And after that straight Home.  Tell Dr. Jim when you write.  But—­Nick—­I think we should like to feather the nest all ourselves, don’t you?”

“Why, rather!” said Nick.  “We’ll do it together—­just you and I.”

“Just you and I,” she repeated softly.

Later, hand in hand, they looked across the valley to the shining crags that glistened spear-like in the sun.

A great silence lay around them—­a peace unspeakable—­that those silver crests lifted into the splendour of Infinity.

They stood alone together—­above the world—­with their faces to the mountains.

And thus standing with the woman he loved, Nick spoke, briefly—­it seemed lightly—­yet with a certain tremor in his voice.

“Horses,” he said—­“and chariots—­of fire!” And Muriel looked at him with memory and understanding in her eyes.

THE END