She wanted to know all the things that real tourists want to know, and Jack forgot that he hated to answer foolish questions.  The piles of empty coal-oil cans, for instance—­she should have known that they had been packed up there full, to run the oil stove in the corner.  The spring—­he had to take his bucket and go down with her and show her where the spring was, but he did not seem to mind that, either.  The flag, whipping over the station on its short staff, interested her too, and he helped her guess how long it would be before the stars and stripes snapped themselves to ribbons.  The book on astronomy she dipped into, turning it to look at the full-page illustrations of certain constellations that were to Jack like old friends.  The books on forestry she glanced at, and the magazines she inspected with less interest.

“Oh, I’ve got the latest movie magazines.  I could bring them up sometime if you like—­or send them by the man who brings your stuff up, if you’ll tell him to stop at the cabin.”

“You bring them yourself,” Jack urged, his eagerness so open and unashamed that Marion blushed, and suddenly remembered Kate down the slope there waiting for her.  She must go, she said; and she went, almost as suddenly as she came, and never mentioned her half-formed determination to wait up there for the sunset.

Jack went with her as far as he dared, and stood under a wind-tortured balsam fir and watched her out of sight.  On the last ledge before the trail dipped down over the hump that would hide her for good, she turned and looked up at him.  She stood there poised—­so it seemed—­between mountain-crest and the sky.  The lake lay quiet and shadowed, deep below her, as though God had dropped a tear and the mountain was holding it reverently cupped, sheltering it from the keen winds of the heights.  Beyond, painted with the delicate shadings of distance and yellow sunlight, Indian Valley lay quietly across the lap of the world, its farms and roads and fences sketched in lightly, as with the swift pencil strokes of an artist; its meandering, willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of early harvest time.

She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world.  Her slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant.  She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from which he had fled in guilt and terror.  She stood for a long minute, taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak.  She was not looking at him especially, until she turned to go on.  Then she waved her hand carelessly—­slightingly, he felt in his misery—­and went down the steep slope.

Until he could no longer see the crown of her hat he looked after her.  Then, the sickness of his terrible loneliness upon him again, he turned and slowly climbed back to his glass-walled prison.