"The Yellow Cat plus fate! While I sat there by your fire I recognized you for that friend!"
Far below over the tree tops cloud shadows and sunlight were playing some wonderful game of follow-my-leader; a hawk hung poised on tilting wings; and on the veil of mist that was the spirit of the brook where it cast itself from the ledge curved the arch of a rainbow. The man pointed to the augury.
"You might try me," he said, and they shook hands on the compact, laughing half shamefacedly at their own solemnity.
"As woman to woman," he offered.
"Let it be rather as man to man," she shrugged.
"As you like—as women we should have to begin by explaining ourselves."
"Precisely, and men companion each other on impersonal grounds."
"Then it is a man's friendship?"
"Better still," she mused, "we'll pattern it after the ideals of the disembodied! We'll make this summer, you and I together, a gem from the heart of life—I will have it so!"
So it came about that like two children they played together, worked, walked, or read and talked by the open fire when cold storms came. Every morning she came over the wood-road that led by winding ways from her valley, and at sunset she went back over the trail alone. He might go as far as the outlook half way over the mountain where the path begins to go down, but no farther; as for any fear, she seemed to know nothing of its workings, and the revolver she wore in a case that hung from her belt was a mere convention.