At the head of the wide stair she whispered, with her lips close to his shoulder:  “You are splendid!  I thank you, Mr. Holt.”

Her words, along with the decisive relaxing of her hand upon his arm, were like a dash of cold water in his face.  Rossland could no longer see them, unless he had followed.  The girl had played her part, and a second time he had accepted the role of a slow-witted fool.  But the thought did not anger him.  There was a remarkable element of humor about it for him, viewing himself in the matter, and Mary Standish heard him chuckling as they came out on deck.

Her fingers tightened resentfully upon his arm.  “It isn’t funny,” she reproved.  “It is tragic to be bored by a man like that.”

He knew she was politely lying to anticipate the question he might ask, and he wondered what would happen if he embarrassed her by letting her know he had seen her alone with Rossland at midnight.  He looked down at her, and she met his scrutiny unflinchingly.  She even smiled at him, and her eyes, he thought, were the loveliest liars he had ever looked into.  He felt the stir of an unusual sentiment—­a sort of pride in her, and he made up his mind to say nothing about Rossland.  He was still absurdly convinced that he had not the smallest interest in affairs which were not entirely his own.  Mary Standish evidently believed he was blind, and he would make no effort to spoil her illusion.  Such a course would undoubtedly be most satisfactory in the end.

Even now she seemed to have forgotten the incident at the foot of the stair.  A softer light was in her eyes when they came to the bow of the ship, and Alan fancied he heard a strange little cry on her lips as she looked about her upon the paradise of Taiya Inlet.  Straight ahead, like a lilac ribbon, ran the narrow waterway to Skagway’s door, while on both sides rose high mountains, covered with green forests to the snowy crests that gleamed like white blankets near the clouds.  In this melting season there came to them above the slow throb of the ship’s engines the liquid music of innumerable cascades, and from a mountain that seemed to float almost directly over their heads fell a stream of water a sheer thousand feet to the sea, smoking and twisting in the sunshine like a living thing at play.  And then a miracle happened which even Alan wondered at, for the ship seemed to stand still and the mountain to swing slowly, as if some unseen and mighty force were opening a guarded door, and green foothills with glistening white cottages floated into the picture, and Skagway, heart of romance, monument to brave men and thrilling deeds, drifted out slowly from its hiding-place.  Alan turned to speak, but what he saw in the girl’s face held him silent.  Her lips were parted, and she was staring as if an unexpected thing had risen before her eyes, something that bewildered her and even startled her.

And then, as if speaking to herself and not to Alan Holt, she said in a tense whisper:  “I have seen this place before.  It was a long time ago.  Maybe it was a hundred years or a thousand.  But I have been here.  I have lived under that mountain with the waterfall creeping down it—­”