Probably it would be impossible for even the girl ever fully to understand.

And he needed to be alone to gather strength and mental calmness for the meeting of the problem ahead of him, a complication so unexpected that the very foundation of that stoic equanimity which the mountains had bred in him had suffered a temporary upsetting.

His happiness was almost an insanity.

The dream wherein he had wandered with a spirit of the dead had come true; it was the old idyl in the flesh again, his father, his mother--and back in the cabin beyond the ridge such a love had cried out to him.

And he was afraid to return.