"Showing," she deduced quickly and firmly, "that your philosophy is all wrong."
"Oh no; showing that the much toasted Miss Katherine Jones is too big for mere sunny paths. Showing that she has a latent ambition to climb a mountain in a storm."
Fleetingly she wondered how he should know her for the much toasted Miss Katherine Jones, but in the center of her consciousness rose that alluring picture of climbing a mountain in a storm.
"Tell me how you did it."
"Why—I don't know. I had no method. I told her I needed her."
"You—needed her?"
"And afterwards, in a different way, I told her that again. And I did. I do."
"Why do you need her? How do you need her?" he urged gently.
She hesitated. Her mouth—her splendid mouth shaped by stern or tender thinking to lines of exquisite fineness or firmness—trembled slightly, and the eyes which turned seriously upon him were wistful. "Perhaps," said Katie, "that even on sunny paths one guesses that there are such things as storms in the mountains."
It was only his eyes which answered, but the fullness of the response ushered them into a silence in which they rested together understandingly.