For the rest he warmed to the sheer beauty of the spot.  Vancouver spreads largely over rolling hills and little peninsular juttings into the sea.  From its eminences there sweep unequalled views over the Gulf of Georgia and northwestward along towering mountain ranges upon whose lower slopes the firs and cedars marshal themselves in green battalions.  From his hotel window he would gaze in contented abstraction over the tidal surges through the First Narrows and the tall masts of shipping in a spacious harbor, landlocked and secure, stretching away like a great blue lagoon with motor craft and ferries and squat tugs for waterfowl.  Thompson loved the forest as a man loves pleasant, familiar things, and next to the woods his affection turned to the sea.  Here, at his hand, were both in all their primal grandeur.  He was very sure he would like Vancouver.

Whether the fact that he encountered the Carrs before he was three days in town, had dinner at their home, and took Sophie once to luncheon at the Granada Grill, had anything to do with this conclusion deponent sayeth not.  To be sure he learned with the first frank gleam in Sophie’s gray eyes that she still held for him that mysterious pulse-quickening lure, that for him her presence was sufficient to stir a glow no other woman had ever succeeded in kindling ever so briefly.  But he had acquired poise, confidence, a self-mastery not to be disputed.  He said to himself that he could stand the gaff now.  He could face facts.  And he said to himself further, a little wistfully, that Sophie Carr was worth all the pangs she had ever given him—­more.

He could detect no change in her.  That was one of the queer, personal characteristics she possessed—­that she could pass beyond his ken for months, for years he almost believed, and when he met her again she would be the same, voice, manner, little tricks of speech and gesture unchanged.  Meeting Sophie after that year was like meeting her after a week.  Barring the clothes and the surroundings that spoke of ample means tastefully expended, the general background of her home and associates, she seemed to him unchanged.  Yet when he reflected, he was not so sure of this.  Sophie was gracious, friendly, frankly interested when he talked of himself.  When their talk ran upon impersonal things the old nimbleness of mind functioned.  But under these superficialities he could only guess, after all, what the essential woman of her was now.  He could not say if she were still the queer, self-disciplined mixture of cold logic and primitive passion the Sophie Carr of Lone Moose had revealed to him.  He was not sure if he desired to explore in that direction.  The old scars remained.  He shrank from acquiring new ones, yet perforce let his thought dwell upon her with reviving concentration.  After all, he said to himself, it was on the knees of the gods.

At any rate he was not to be deterred from his project.  He had served his apprenticeship in the game.  He was eager to try his own wings in a flight of his own choosing.