The vision passed.  But that image with the bundle was the one unfinished problem in the project he had come to solve.

He entered the court and saw on his right an open door and, across the wide room, Beatriz Weatherbee.  She was seated at a quaint secretary on which were several bundles of papers, and the familiar box that had contained David’s letters and watch.  At the moment Tisdale discovered her, she was absorbed in a photograph she held in her hands, but at the sound of his step in the patio she turned and rose to meet him.  Her face was radiant, yet she looked at him through arrested tears.

“I am sorry if I startled you,” he said conventionally.  “Banks brought me from the station, but he left me to walk up the bench.”

“I should have seen the red car down the gap had I been at the window,” she replied, “but I was busy putting away papers.  Freight has been moving slowly over the Great Northern, and my secretary arrived only to-day.  It bore the trip very well, considering its age.  It belonged to my great-grandfather, Don Silva Gonzales.  He brought it from Spain, but Elizabeth says it might have been made for this room.  She is walking somewhere in the direction of the spring.”

While she spoke, she touched her cheeks and eyes swiftly with her handkerchief and led the way to some chairs between the secretary and the great window that overlooked the vale.  Tisdale did not look at her directly; he wished to give her time to cover the emotion he had surprised.

“I should say the room was built for Don Silva’s desk,” he amended.  “And—­ do you know?—­this view reminds me of a little picture of Granada, a water-color of my mother’s, that hung in my room when I was a boy.  But this pocket has changed some since we first saw it; your dragon’s teeth are drawn.”

“Isn’t it marvelous how the expression of the whole mountain has altered?” she responded.  “There, at the end of the pines, that looked like a bristling mane, the green gables of Mrs. Banks’ home have changed the contour.  And the Chelan peaks are showing now beyond it.  That day the farther ones were obscured.  But we watched the rain tramp up Hesperides Vale, you remember, and swing off unexpectedly to the near summits.  There was a rainbow, and I said that perhaps somewhere in this valley I should find my pot of gold.”

“I remember.  And I shouldn’t be surprised if you do.”

“Do you think I do not know I have already?” she asked.  “Do you think I have no appreciation, no gratitude?  Why, even had I been too dull to see it, Elizabeth would have told me that this house alone, to say nothing of the project, must have cost a good deal of money; and that, no matter how deeply Mr. Banks may have felt his obligation to David, it was not in reason he should have allowed everything to revert to me.  But I told him I should consider the investment as a loan, and now, since he has let me know the truth”—­her voice fluctuated softly—­“I shall make it a debt of honor just the same.  Sometime—­I shall repay you.”