Tisdale waited a thoughtful moment.  The ripple of amusement was gone; the iron, so near the surface, cropped through.  “I can’t answer that,” he said.  “I do not know.  A man is not always able to control a first impulse, and before that pine tree fell there wasn’t time to hesitate.”

At this she was silent.  All her buoyancy, the charming camaraderie that stopped just short of intimacy, had dropped from her.  It was as though the atmosphere of that pocket rose and clung to her, enveloped her like a nimbus, as she went down.  In the pent heat her face seemed cold.  She had the appearance of being older.  The fine vertical line at the corner of her mouth, which Tisdale had not noticed before, brought a tightness to his throat when he ventured to look at her.  How could Weatherbee have been so blind?  How could he have missed the finer, spiritual loveliness of this woman?  Weatherbee, who himself had been so sensitive; whose intuition was almost feminine.

They had reached the final step from the bench to the floor of the vale when Hollis spoke again.  “If you do decide to buy this land and open the project, I could recommend a man who would make a trusty manager.”

“Oh, you don’t understand,” she replied in desperation “You don’t understand.  I should have to stay, to live in this terrible place for weeks, months at a time.  I couldn’t endure it.  That dreadful mountain there at the gap would forever be watching me, holding me in.”

Tisdale looked at her, knitting his brows, “I told you it was dangerous to allow yourself to feel the personality of inanimate things too much.”

“I know.  I know.  And this terrible beast”—­she paused, trying to steady her voice; her whole body trembled—­“would remind me constantly of those awful Alaska peaks—­the ones that crowded—­threatened him.”

Tisdale’s face cleared.  So that was the trouble.  Now he understood.  “Then it’s all right”—­the minor notes in his voice, vibrating softly, had the quality of a caress—­“don’t worry any more.  I am going to buy this land of David’s.  Trust me to see the project through.”

CHAPTER XII

“Whom the gods would destroy”

Hope is an insistent thing.  It may be strangled, lie cold and buried deep in the heart of a man, yet suddenly, without premonition, he may feel it rise and stretch small hands, groping towards a ray of light.  So in that reminiscent hour while the train labored up through the Cascades to the great tunnel, Tisdale told himself this woman—­the one woman for whom he must have been waiting all these years, at whose coming old and cherished memories had faded to shadows—­was very near to loving him.  Already she knew that those mysterious forces she called Fate had impelled them out of their separate orbits through unusual ways, to meet.  Sometime—­he would not press her, he could be patient—­but sometime she would surely pay him that debt.