He looked at the rancher’s daughter.  What had happened?  She was the same, yet not the same.  Her eyes were awaiting his.  They did not flinch.  They were wells of light; a strange new light; depth of light.  Had the veil lifted at last?  The welter of sullen anger subsided within him.  The wrapped mystery of the mountain twilight hushed speech.  What folly it all was—­that far off clamor of greed in the Outer World, that wolfish war of self-interest down in the Valley, that clack of the wordsters darkening wisdom without knowledge!  As if one man, as if one generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than one man’s will could stop an avalanche by refusing to heed the law of the snowflake!

Calamity, the little withered half-breed woman, slipped in and out of the Forester’s cabin tidying up bachelor confusion.  The wind suffed through the evergreens in dream voices, pansy-soft to the touch.  The slow-swaying evergreens rocked to a rhythm old as Eternity, Druid priests standing guard over the sacrament of love and night.  From the purpling Valley came the sibilant hush of the River.  Somewhere, from the branches below the Ridge, a water thrush gurgled a last joyous note that rippled liquid gold through the twilight.

Life might have become the tent of a night in an Eternity—­a tent of sky hung with stars; the after-glow a topaz gate ajar into some infinite life.  Then Love and Silence and Eternity had wrapped them round as in a robe of prayer.  He was standing above the dead camp-fire.  She was leaning forward from the slab seat, her face between her hands.  With a catch of breath, she withdrew her eyes from his and watched the long shadows creep like ghosts across the Valley.

What he said aloud in the nonchalant voice of twentieth century youth keeping hold of himself was—­

“Not bad, is it?” nodding at the opal flame-winged peak.  “Pretty good show turned on free every night?”

A meadow lark went lifting above the Ridge dropping silver arrows of song; and a little flutter of phantom wind came rustling through the pine needles.

“I don’t suppose,” she was saying—­he had never heard those notes in her voice before:  they were gold, gold flute notes to melt rock-hard self-control and touch the timbre of unknown chords within—­“I don’t suppose anything ever was accomplished without somebody being willing to fight a losing battle.  Do you?” Wayland stretched out on the ground at her feet.

“Eleanor, do you know, do you realize—?”

“Yes I know,” she whispered.

And somehow, unpremeditated and half way, their hands met.

“Something wonderful has happened to us both to-night.”

The sheen of the stars had come to her eyes.  She could not trust her glance to meet his.  A compulsion was sweeping over her in waves, drawing her to him—­her free hand lay on his hair; her averted face flushed to the warmth of his nearness.