After a while they were at the mountain cabin, and Kow, with tears running down his yellow face, was helping them.  Then Peter and his friend were walking up over the familiar trails, he hardly knew where, in the late twilight, and then they went into the old living room, and Alix was lying there, splendid, sweet, untouched, with her brave, brown forehead shadowed softly by her brown hair, and her lashes resting upon her cheeks, and her fingers clasped about the stems of three great, creamy roses.

There were other flowers all about, and there were women in the room.  White draperies fell with sweeping lines from the merciful veiling of the crushed figure, and Alix might have been only asleep, and dreaming some heroic dream that lent that secret pride and joy to her mouth and filled those closed eyes with a triumph they had never known in life.

Peter stood and looked down at her, and the men and women drew back.  But although the muscles of his mouth twitched, he did not weep.  He looked long at her, while an utter silence filled the room, and while twilight deepened into dark over the cabin and over the mountain above it.

Something cold touched his hand, and he heard the dog whimper.  Without turning his head or moving his eyes from Alix’s face, he pressed his fingers on the silky head; his breast rose on one agonized breath, but he controlled it.  Buck was as still as his master, sensing, in unfailing dog-fashion, that something was wrong.

“So that was your way out, Alix?” Peter said in the depth of his soul.  “That was your solution for us all?  You would go out of life, away from the sunshine and the trees and the hills that you loved, so that Cherry and I should be saved?  I was blind not to see it.  I have been blind from the very beginning.”

Silence.  The room was filling with shadows.  On the mantel was a deep bowl of roses that he remembered watching her cut—­was it yesterday or centuries ago?

“I was wrong,” he said.  “But I think you would be sorry to have me face—­what I am facing now.  You were always so forgiving, Alix; you would be the first to be sorry.”

He put his hand over the tigerish pain that was beginning to reach his heart.  His throat felt thick and choked, and still he did not cry.

“An hour ago,” he said, “if it had been that the least thought of what this meant to you might have reached me an hour ago, it would not have been too late.  Alix, one look into your eyes an hour ago might have saved us all!  Fred,” Peter said aloud, with a bitter groan, clinching tight the hands of the old friend who had crept in to stand beside him “Fred, she was here, in all her health and joy and strength only today.  And now—­”

“I know—­old man—­” the other man muttered.  He looked anxiously at Peter’s terrible face.  In the silence the dog whimpered faintly.  But when Peter, after an endless five minutes, turned away, it was to speak to his friend in an almost normal voice.