"Now," he said, "I'm going to run up to the hermit's shack and reason with him as best I can. I shall paint in touching colors our sad plight.

If the man has an atom of decency--"

"A walk on the mountain in the morning," said Miss Thornhill quickly.

"Splendid. I--"

"Wonderful," put in Miss Norton. "I, for one, can't resist. Even though I haven't been invited, I'm going along." She smiled sweetly. She had beaten the other girl by the breadth of a hair, and she knew it. New glories shone in her eyes.

"Good for you!" said Magee. The evil hour of explanations was at hand, surely. "Run up and get your things."

While Miss Norton was gone, Mr. Cargan and Lou Max engaged in earnest converse near a window. After which Mr. Max pulled on his overcoat.

"I ain't been invited either," he said, "but I reckon I'll go along. I always wanted to see what a hermit lived like when he's really buckled down to the hermit business. And then a walk in the morning has always been my first rule for health. You don't mind, do you?"

"Who am I," asked Magee, "that I should stand between you and health?

Come along, by all means."

With the blue corduroy suit again complete, and the saucy hat perched on her blond head, Miss Norton ran down the stairs and received the news that Mr. Max also was enthralled by the possibilities of a walk up Baldpate. The three went out through the front door, and found under the snow a hint of the path that led to the shack of the post-card merchant.

"Will you go ahead?" asked Magee of Max.

"Sorry," grinned Max, "but I guess I'll bring up the rear."

"Suspicion," said Mr. Magee, shaking his head, "has caused a lot of trouble in the world. Remember the cruelty practised on Pueblo Sam."

"I do," replied Mr. Max, "and it nearly breaks my heart. But there's a little matter I forgot to mention last night. Suspicion is all right in its place."

"Where's that?" asked Mr. Magee.

Mr. Max tapped his narrow chest. "Here," he said. So the three began the climb, Mr. Magee and the girl ahead, Mr. Max leering at their heels.

The snow still fell, and the picture of the world was painted in grays and whites. At some points along the way to the hermit's abode it had drifted deep; at others the foot-path was swept almost bare by the wind.

For a time Mr. Max kept so close that the conversation of the two in the lead was necessarily of the commonplaces of the wind and sky and mountain.

Covertly Mr. Magee glanced at the girl striding along by his side. The red flamed in her cheeks; her long lashes were flecked with the white of the snow; her face was such a one as middle-aged men dream of while their fat wives read the evening paper's beauty hints at their side. Far beyond the ordinary woman was she desirable and pleasing. Mr. Magee told himself he had been a fool. For he who had fought so valiantly for her heart's desire at the foot of the steps had faltered when the time came to hand her the prize. Why? What place had caution in the wild scheme of the night before? None, surely. And yet he, dolt, idiot, coward, had in the moment of triumph turned cautious. Full confession, he decided, was the only way out.

Mr. Max was panting along quite ten feet behind. Over her shoulder the girl noted this; she turned her questioning eyes on Magee; he felt that his moment had come.

"I don't know how to begin," muttered the novelist whose puppets'

speeches had always been so apt. "Last night you sent me on a sort of--quest for the golden fleece. I didn't know who had been fleeced, or what the idea was. But I fared forth, as they say. I got it for you--"

The eyes of the girl glowed happily. She was beaming.

"I'm so glad," she said. "But why--why didn't you give it to me last night? It would have meant so much if you had."

"That," replied Mr. Magee, "is what I'm coming to--very reluctantly. Did you note any spirit of caution in the fellow who set forth on your quest, and dropped over the balcony rail? You did not. I waited on the porch and saw Max tap the safe. I saw him and Cargan come out. I waited for them. Just as I was about to jump on them, somebody--the man with the seventh key, I guess--did it for me. There was a scuffle. I joined it. I emerged with the package everybody seems so interested in."

"Yes," said the girl breathlessly. "And then--"

"I started to bring it to you," went on Magee, glancing over his shoulder at Max. "I was all aglow with romance, and battle, and all that sort of thing. I pictured the thrill of handing you the thing you had asked. I ran up-stairs. At the head of the stairs--I saw her."

The light died in her eyes. Reproach entered there.

"Yes," continued Magee, "your knight errant lost his nerve. He ceased to run on schedule. She, too, asked me for that package of money."

"And you gave it to her," said the girl scornfully.

"Oh, no," answered Magee quickly. "Not so bad as that. I simply sat down on the steps and thought. I got cautious. I decided to wait until to-day. I--I did wait."

He paused. The girl strode on, looking straight ahead. Mr. Magee thought of adding that he had felt it might be dangerous to place a package so voraciously desired in her frail hands. He decided he'd better not, on second thought.

"I know," he said, "what you think. I'm a fine specimen of a man to send on a hunt like that. A weak-kneed mollycoddle who pa.s.ses into a state of coma at the crucial moment. But--I'm going to give you that package yet."

The girl turned her head. Mr. Magee saw that her eyes were misty with tears.

"You're playing with me," she said brokenly. "I might have known. And I trusted you. You're in the game with the others--and I thought you weren't. I staked my whole chance of success on you--now you're making sport of me. You never intended to give me that money--you don't intend to now."

"On my word," cried Magee, "I do intend to give it to you. The minute we get back to the inn. I have it safe in my room."

"Give it to her," said the girl bitterly. "Why don't you give it to her?"

Oh, the perversity of women!

"It's you I want to give it to," replied Magee warmly. "I don't know what was the matter with me last night. I was a fool. You don't believe in me, I know--" Her face was cold and expressionless.

"And I wanted to believe in you--so much," she said.

"Why did you want to?" cried Magee. "Why?"

She plodded on through the snow.

"You must believe," he pleaded. "I don't know what all this is about--on my word of honor. But I want to give you that money, and I will--the minute we get back to the inn. Will you believe then? Will you?"

"I hate you," said the girl simply.

She should not have said that. As far back as he could remember, such opposition had stirred Mr. Magee to wild deeds. He opened his mouth and words flowed forth. What were the words?

"I love you! I love you! Ever since that moment in the station I have loved you! I love you!"

Faintly he heard himself saying it over and over. By the G.o.ds, he was proposing! Inanely, in words of one syllable, as the butcher's boy might have told his love to the second kitchen maid.

"I love you," he continued. Idiot!

Often Mr. Magee had thought of the moment when he would tell his love to a woman. It was a moment of dim lights, music perhaps in the distance, two souls caught up in the magic of the moonlit night--a pretty graceful speech from him, a sweet gracious surrender from the girl. And this--instead.

"I love you." In heaven's name, was he never going to stop saying it? "I want you to believe."

Bright morning on the mountain, a girl in an angry mood at his side, a seedy chaperon on his trail, an erring cook ahead. Good lord! He recalled that a fellow novelist, whose love scenes were regarded as models by young people suffering the tender pa.s.sion, had once confessed that he proposed to his wife on a street-car, and was accepted just as the conductor handed him his transfers. Mr. Magee had been scornful. He could never be scornful again. By a tremendous effort he avoided repeating his childish refrain.