like the dreams I've been dreaming during the past eighteen
months, and the visions I've seen during that long, maddening
night up on the coast, when for five months we didn't see a glow
of the sun. But--you understand--it's hard to comprehend."

From her he glanced swiftly over the rocks of the coulee, as if
expecting to see some sign of the home she had spoken of, or at
least of some other human presence. She understood his questioning
look. "I am alone," she said.

The quality of her voice startled him more then her words. There
was a deeper, darker glow in her eyes as she watched their effect
upon him. She swept out a gleaming white arm, still moist with the
water of the pool, taking in the wide, autumn-tinted spaces about
them.

"I am alone," she repeated, still keeping her eyes on his face.
"Entirely alone. That is why you startled me--why I was afraid.
This is my hiding-place, and I thought--"

He saw that she had spoken words that she would have recalled. She
hesitated. Her lips trembled. In that moment of suspense a little
gray ermine dislodged a stone from the rock ridge above them, and
at the sound of it as it struck behind her the girl gave a start,
and a quick flash of the old fear leaped for an instant into her
face. And now Philip beheld something in her which he had been too
bewildered and wonder-struck to observe before. Her first terror
had been so acute that he had failed to see what remained after
her fright had passed. But it was clear to him now, and the look
that came into his own face told her that he had made the