starved for his tools, such was Sylvie's mind to Hugh. She was
darkness for him to scrawl upon with light; she was the romantic ear
to his romantic tongue; she was the poet reader for his gorgeous
imagery. He had not only the happiness of the successful lover, but
even more, the happiness of the successful creator. What he was
creating was the Hugh that might have been.

With Sylvie clinging to his hand, he now went out singing--the three
of them together, great Hugh and happy artist Hugh all but welded
into one man for her and for her love. Those were splendid days, days
of fantastic happiness. Hugh's joy, his sense of freedom, gave him
a tenfold gift of fascination.

Yet one day--one of those dim, moist spring days more colorful to
Hugh's heart than any of his days--there cut into his consciousness
like a hard, thin edge, a sense of a little growing change in Sylvie.
It had been there--the change,--slightly, dimly there, ever since
the sheriff's visit. It was not that she doubted Hugh--such a
suspicion would have struck him instantly aware and awake--but that
she had become in some way uncertain of herself, restless, depressed,
afraid. And it was always his love-making that brought the reaction,
a curious, delicate, inner recoil, so delicate and slight, so deep
beneath the threshold of her consciousness, that in the blind glory
of his self-intoxication he missed it altogether--might, indeed, have
gone on missing it, as she would have gone on ignoring or repressing
it, if it had not been for their kiss on the mountain-top.

This was one of Hugh's madnesses; he would take Sylvie up a mountain
and show her his kingdom, show her himself as lord of the wilderness.
He had been there before many times, to the top of their one mountain,