his wife there to worship and glorify.  A word from her at any time would have turned the balance and brought him home; her presence, her sympathy, even that last season at the Aurora mine, would have brought him through.  I wish you had seen his face that day I met him below the glacier and had told him about the woman waiting down the gorge.  ‘My God, Tisdale,’ he said, ‘suppose it had been my wife.’”

Miss Armitage stood another moment, locking her hands one over the other in a tightening grip.  Her lip trembled again, but the words failed.  She turned and walked uncertainly the few steps to the end of the porch.

“You believe she might have influenced him, but I do not.  Oh, I see, I see, how you have measured him by your own great heart.  But”—­she turned towards him and went on slowly, her voice fluctuating in little, steadying pauses—­“even if you were right, you might be generous; you might try to imagine her side.  Suppose she had not guessed his—­need—­of her; been able to read, as you did, between the lines.  Sometimes a woman waits to be told.  A proud woman does.”  She came back the few steps.  “Beatriz Weatherbee isn’t the kind of woman you think she is.  She has faults, of course, but she has tried to make the best of her life.  If she made a mistake—­or thought she had—­no one else knew it.  She braved it through.  She’s been high-strung, too.”

Tisdale put up his hand.  “Don’t say any more; don’t try to excuse her to me.  It’s of no use.  Good night.”  But a few feet from the porch he stopped to add, less grimly:  “I should have said good morning.  You see how that pyramid stands out against that pale streak of horizon.  There is only time for a nap before sunrise.  Day is breaking.”

She was silent, but something in the intensity of her gaze, the unspoken appeal that had also a hint of dread, the stillness of her small face, white in the uncertain light when so lately he had seen it sparkle and glow, brought him back.

“I’ve tired you out,” he said.  “I shouldn’t have told you that story.  But this outlook to-night reminded me of that other canyon, and I thought it might help to bridge over the time.  There’s nothing can tide one through an unpleasant situation like hearing about some one who fared worse.  And I hadn’t meant to go so far into details.  I’m sorry,” and he held out his hand, “but it was your interest, sympathy, something about you, that drew me on.”

She did not answer directly.  She seemed to need the moment to find her voice and bring it under control.  Then, “Any one must have been interested,” she said, and drew away her hand.  “You have the story-teller’s gift.  And I want to thank you for making it all so clear to me; it was a revelation.”

CHAPTER IX

THE DUNES OF THE COLUMBIA

Behind them, as Tisdale drove down, the heights they had crossed were still shrouded in thunder-caps, but before them the end of the Wenatchee range lifted clear-cut, in a mighty promontory, from the face of the desert.  Already the morning sun gave a promise of heat, and as the bays rounded a knoll, Miss Armitage raised her hands to shade her eyes.