“That does me good. It is better at times even than the sunny hills. This was Gwen's best spot.”
I saw that the canyon had done its work with him. His face was strong and calm as the hills on a summer morning, and with this face he looked in upon Gwen. It was one of her bad days and one of her bad moods, but like a summer breeze he burst into the little room.
“Oh, Gwen!” he cried, without a word of greeting, much less of Commiseration, “we have had such a ride!” And he spread out the sunlit, round-topped hills before her, till I could feel their very breezes in my face. This The Duke had never dared to do, fearing to grieve her with pictures of what she should look upon no more. But, as The Pilot talked, before she knew, Gwen was out again upon her beloved hills, breathing their fresh, sunny air, filling her heart with their multitudinous delights, till her eyes grew bright and the lines of fretting smoothed out of her face and she forgot her pain. Then, before she could remember, he had her down into the canyon, feasting her heart with its airs and sights and sounds. The black, glistening rocks, tricked out with moss and trailing vines, the great elms and low green cedars, the oaks and shivering poplars, the clematis and columbine hanging from the rocky nooks, and the violets and maiden-hair deep bedded in their mosses. All this and far more he showed her with a touch so light as not to shake the morning dew from bell or leaf or frond, and with a voice so soft and full of music as to fill our hearts with the canyon's mingling sounds, and, as I looked upon her face, I said to myself: “Dear old Pilot! for this I shall always love you well.” As poor Gwen listened, the rapture of it drew the big tears down her cheeks--alas! no longer brown, but white, and for that day at least the dull, dead weariness was lifted from her heart.
The Pilot's first visit to Gwen had been a triumph. But none knew better than he that the fight was still to come, for deep in Gwen's heart were thoughts whose pain made her forget all other.
“Was it God let me fall?” she asked abruptly one day, and The Pilot knew the fight was on; but he only answered, looking fearlessly into her eyes:
“Why did He let me fall?” and her voice was very deliberate.