Often, in these hours of dreams he watched the girl, and asked himself of what was she dreaming?  For the changing light of the valley reflected its gleam and its color and its meaning in the changing light of her eyes.  He saw in them infinitely more than he saw in his dreams.  He saw thought and soul and nature—­strong vision of life.  All tidings the west wind blew from distance and age he found deep in those dark-blue depths, and found them mysteries solved.  Under their wistful shadow he softened, and in the softening felt himself grow a sadder, a wiser, and a better man.

While the west wind blew its tidings, filling his heart full, teaching him a man’s part, the days passed, the purple clouds changed to white, and the storms were over for that summer.

“I must go now,” he said.

“When?” she asked.

“At once—­to-night.”

“I’m glad the time has come.  It dragged at me.  Go—­for you’ll come back the sooner.”

Late in the afternoon, as the ruddy sun split its last flame in the ragged notch of the western wall, Bess walked with Venters along the eastern terrace, up the long, weathered slope, under the great stone bridge.  They entered the narrow gorge to climb around the fence long before built there by Venters.  Farther than this she had never been.  Twilight had already fallen in the gorge.  It brightened to waning shadow in the wider ascent.  He showed her Balancing Rock, of which he had often told her, and explained its sinister leaning over the outlet.  Shuddering, she looked down the long, pale incline with its closed-in, toppling walls.

“What an awful trail!  Did you carry me up here?”

“I did, surely,” replied he.

“It frightens me, somehow.  Yet I never was afraid of trails.  I’d ride anywhere a horse could go, and climb where he couldn’t.  But there’s something fearful here.  I feel as—­as if the place was watching me.”

“Look at this rock.  It’s balanced here—­balanced perfectly.  You know I told you the cliff-dwellers cut the rock, and why.  But they’re gone and the rock waits.  Can’t you see—­feel how it waits here?  I moved it once, and I’ll never dare again.  A strong heave would start it.  Then it would fall and bang, and smash that crag, and jar the walls, and close forever the outlet to Deception Pass!”

“Ah!  When you come back I’ll steal up here and push and push with all my might to roll the rock and close forever the outlet to the Pass!” She said it lightly, but in the undercurrent of her voice was a heavier note, a ring deeper than any ever given mere play of words.

“Bess!...You can’t dare me!  Wait till I come back with supplies—­ then roll the stone.”

“I—­was—­in—­fun.”  Her voice now throbbed low.  “Always you must be free to go when you will.  Go now...this place presses on me—­stifles me.”

“I’m going—­but you had something to tell me?”

“Yes....Will you—­come back?”