Sometimes Hollister sat by, covertly watching Mills and Myra.  He could make nothing of Myra.  She was courteous, companionable, nothing more.  But to Hollister Mills’ trouble was plain enough.  The man was on his guard, as if he knew betrayal lurked in the glance of his eye, in the quality of his tone.  Hollister gauged the depths of Mills’ feelings by the smoldering fire in his glance,—­that glow in Mills’ dark eyes when they rested too long on Myra.  There would be open upon his face a look of hopelessness, as if he dwelt on something that fascinated and baffled him.

Sometimes, latterly, he saw a hint of that same dubious expression about Archie Lawanne.  But there was a different temper in Lawanne, a flash of the sardonic at times.

In July, however, Lawanne went away.

“I’m coming back, though,” he told Hollister before he left.  “I think I shall put up a cabin and winter here.”

“I’ll be glad to see you,” Hollister replied, “but it’s a lonely valley in the winter.”

Lawanne smiled.

“I can stand isolation for a change,” he said.  “I want to write a book.  And while I am outside I’ll send you in a couple that I have already written.  You will see me in October.  Try to get the shingle-bolt rush over so we can go out after deer together now and then.”

So for a time the Toba saw no more of Lawanne.  Hollister missed him.  So did Doris.  But she had Myra Bland to keep her company while Hollister was away at work in the timber.  Sometimes Bland himself dropped in.  But Hollister could never find himself on any common ground of mutual interest with this sporting Englishman.  He was a bluff, hearty, healthy man, apparently without either intellect or affectation.

“What do you think of Bland?” he asked Doris once.

“I can’t think of him, because I can’t see him,” she answered.  “He is either very clever at concealing any sort of personality, or he is simply a big, strong, stupid man.”

Which was precisely what Hollister himself thought.

“Isn’t it queer,” Doris went on, “how vivid a thing personality is?  Now Myra and Mr. Lawanne are definite, colorable entities to me.  So is Charlie Mills, quiet as he is.  And yet I can’t make Bland seem anything more than simply a voice with a slightly English accent.”

“Well, there must be something to him, or she wouldn’t have married him,” Hollister remarked.

“Perhaps.  But I shouldn’t wonder if she married him for something that existed mostly in her own mind,” Doris reflected.  “Women often do that—­men too, I suppose.  I very nearly did myself once.  Then I discovered that this ideal man was something I had created in my own imagination.”

“How did you find that out before you were committed to the enterprise?” he asked curiously.

“Because my reason and my emotions were in continual conflict over that man,” Doris said thoughtfully.  “I have always been sure, ever since I began to take men seriously, that I wouldn’t get on very long with any man who was simply a strong, healthy animal.  And as soon as I saw that this admirable young man of mine hadn’t much to offer that wasn’t purely physical, why, the glamor all faded.”