She stood beside him for a moment, smiling, and then softly sank upon the ground by his side, still watching. The rain had stopped falling, but outside the glistening circle of the firelight the water from the heavy branches dripped heavily. The heavens lightened and a bleary cloud opened a single eye and, blinking a moment, at last let the moonlight through. From every tree pendants of diamonds, festoons of opals were hung and flashed their radiance in the rising breeze, falling in splendid profusion. Over her head the drops pattered noisily upon the roof. After awhile, she heard them singly and at last silence fell again upon the forest . It was her night of vigil and the girl kept it long. She was not frightened now. Kee-way-din crooned a lullaby, and she knew that the trees which repeated it were her friends. It was a night of mystery, of dreams and of a melancholy so sweet that she was willing even then to die with the pain of it. “Famously——” “But they couldn’t live on love.” “Oh, they fished and ate berries, and Gallatin shot a deer.” “Lucky, lucky dog!” [77] “They’d be there now, if the guides hadn’t found them.” “His guides?” “Yes, and hers.” “Hers! She wasn’t a native then?” “Not on your life. A New Yorker—and a clinker. That’s the mystery. Her guide came from the eastward but her camp must have been—why, what’s the matter, Coley?” Mr. Van Duyn had put his glass upon the table and had risen heavily from his easy chair, his pale blue eyes unpleasantly prominent. He pulled at his collar-band and gasped . “Heat—damn heat!” and walked away muttering. It was just in the doorway that he met Phil Gallatin, who, with a smile, was extending the hand of fellowship. He glowered at the newcomer, touched the extended fingers flabbily and departed, while Gallatin watched him go, not knowing whether to be angry or only amused. But he shrugged a shoulder and joined the group near the window. The greetings were cordial and the Colonel motioned to the servant to take Gallatin’s order. “No, thanks, Colonel,” said Gallatin, his lips slightly compressed. “Really! Glad to hear it, my boy. It’s a silly business.” And then to the waiting-man: “Make mine a Swissesse this time. It’s ruination, sir, this drinking when you don’t want it—just because some silly ass punches the bell.” “But suppose you do want it,” laughed Spencer. “Then all the more reason to refuse.” Gallatin sank into the chair that Van Duyn had vacated. These were his accustomed haunts, these were[78] his associates, but he now felt ill at ease and out of place in their company. He came here in the afternoons sometimes, but the club only made his difficulties greater. He listened silently to the gossip of the widening group of men, of somebody’s coup down town, of Larry Kane’s trip to the Rockies, of the opening of the hunting season on Long Island, the prospects of a gay winter and the thousand and one happenings that made up the life of the leisurely group of men about him. The servant brought the tray and laid the glasses . “Won’t change your mind, Phil?” asked Colonel Broadhurst again. Gallatin straightened. “No, thanks,” he repeated. “That’s right,” laughed the Colonel jovially. “The true secret of drinking is to drink when you don’t want it—and refuse when you do.” “Gad! Crosby, for a man who never refuses—” began Kane. “It only shows what a martyr I am to the usages of society,” concluded the Colonel with a chuckle. “How’s the crop of buds this year?” queried Larry Kane. “Ask ‘Bibby’ Worthington,” suggested Percy Endicott. “He’s got ’em all down, looks, condition, action, pedigree——” “Bigger than usual,” said the gentleman appealed to, “queens, too, some of ’em.” “And have you picked out the lucky one already?” laughed Spencer. “Bibby” Worthington, as everybody knew, had been “coming out” for ten years, with each season’s crop of debutantes, and hand and heart to the newest of them.