He was on the top of the world, and he wanted to get down or have
somebody else come up to him. Peaks are by definition and necessity
limited to small foothold. Climbing up is hardly more dangerous
than climbing down. Even to bend and lift some one else up alongside
involves a risk of falling or of being pushed overboard.

But at present Jim Dyckman was thinking of the other girl, Charity
Coe Cheever, perched on a peak as cold and high as his own, but far
removed from his reach.

Even the double seat in the sleeping-car was too small for Jim. He
sprawled from back to back, slumped and hunched in curves and angles
that should have looked peasant and yet somehow had the opposite
effect.

His shoes were thick-soled but unquestionably expensive, his clothes
of loose, rough stuff manifestly fashionable. Like them, he had a
kind of burly grace. He had been used to a well-upholstered life.

He was one of those giants that often grow in rich men's homes. His
father was such another, and his mother suggested the Statue of
Liberty in corsets and on high heels.

Dyckman was reading a weekly journal devoted to horses and dogs,
and reading with such interest that he hardly knew when the train
stopped.

He did not see the woman who got out of a motor and got into the
train, and whose small baggage the porter put in the empty place
opposite his. He did not see that she leaned into the aisle and