“But Little Rivers is best,” she added after a time, speaking not to him, but devoutly to the oasis of green.

In the crystal air Little Rivers seemed so near that one could touch the roofs of the houses with the fingertips of an extended arm, and yet so diminutive in the spacious bosom of the plateau that it might be set in the palm of the hand.

Jack was as one afraid of his own power of speech.  A misplaced word might send her away as oblivious of him as a globule of mercury rolling free from the grasp.  Here was a Mary unfathomed of all his hazards of study, undreamed of in all his flights of fancy.

“It is my last view,” he began.  “I have said all my good-bys in town.  I am going.”

Covertly, fearfully, he watched the effect of the news.  At least now she would look around at him.  He would no longer have to talk to a profile and to the golden mist of the horizon about the greatest thing of his life.  But there was no sign of surprise; not even an inclination of her head.

“Yes,” she told the horizon; and after a little silence added:  “The time has come to play another part?”

She asked the question of the horizon, without any trace of the old banter over the wall.  She asked it in confirmation of a commonplace.

“I know that you have always thought of me as playing a part.  But I am not my own master.  I must go.  I—­”

“Back to your millions!” She finished the sentence for him.

“Then you—­you knew!  You knew!” But his exclamation of astonishment did not move her to a glance in his direction or even a tremor.

“Yes,” she went on.  “Father told me about your millions last night.  He has known from the first who you were.”

“And he told no one else in Little Rivers?  He never mentioned it to me or even to you before!”

“Why should he when you did not mention it yourself?  His omission was natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude.  Isn’t it part of the custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert?  There is no standard except the conduct of the present!”

And all this speech was in a monotone of quiet explanation.

“He did not even tell you until last night!  Until after our meeting on the other side of the pass!  It is strange! strange!” he repeated in the insistence of wonder.

He saw the lashes part a little, then quiver and close as she lifted her gaze from the horizon rim to the vortex of the sun.  Then she smiled wearily.

“He likes a joke,” she said.  “Probably he enjoyed his knowledge of your secret and wanted to see if I would guess the truth before you were through playing your part.”

“But the part was not a part!” he said, with the emphasis of fire creeping along a fuse.  “It was real.  I do not want to leave Little Rivers!”

“Not in your present enthusiasm,” she returned with a warning inflection of literalness, when he would have welcomed satire, anger, or any reprisal of words as something live and warm; something on which his mind could lay definite hold.