"But I didn't," returned Jack lightly.
"You would have but for Mr. Harding." Nan turned eyes still full of horror on Jack's preserver, while Jack herself held out her hand.
"Thank you," she said. "I came near getting into a bad scrape, didn't I?" She walked off in a direction which gave her safety, really more overcome than she was willing to admit.
"I want to thank you, too," said Nan in a low voice to the young man. "I cannot face the thought of what might have happened but for your quick eye and——" She paused and turned her head, unable to keep back the tears which nervousness brought to her eyes.
"Don't, please don't," said Mr. Harding coming to her side. "Let us leave this terrible place and go somewhere out of danger where you can sit down and get calm. You are trembling still."
He led her to a sheltered spot and presently she was herself again. Mary Lee and Jean had already returned, Jean being quite too timid to venture so far as the others. Jack meekly followed behind Nan and her companion, for once feeling too young to demand attention, and altogether ashamed of having given her dear Nan such cause for alarm. She sat apart quite in the manner of a younger Jack who so often felt herself a culprit. "We must not say anything to Aunt Helen and mother about this," charged Nan as she rose to her feet. "Remember, Jack, not a word to any one, not even to Mary Lee or Jean. There is no use in giving needless worry to them, for even now that it is all over and you are safe, it would distress mother and call up all sorts of visions."
"Dear me," returned Jack plaintively, "I am sure I shall only be too glad not to have it known that I was such a silly thing. The worst of it is," she added, "that I cannot feel that I am superior to Mr. Warner after this."
This brought a laugh and relieved the tension. Then after one more look at the curling white smoke, the bare, leafless valley, they left the place and took the narrow path which led them back to what seemed an upper world.
"I feel as if I had been to the mouth of the underworld," said Nan. "It is early yet; suppose we go around by Lake Hakoné; it is so lovely a spot that perhaps it will drive away the horror of this. We shall enjoy it more to-day with no punster along, and moreover it is a much brighter day and we shall see the reflections more clearly."
This plan was unanimously approved and returning by another path, they came to the bottomless lake in whose perpetually cold waters Fujisan was reflected in all its beauty, for now the mists had rolled away and the Lady Mountain revealed herself without her veil.