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I could see now that he got worse daily. He stopped his mockeries, his occasional fits of reckless gayety. He stopped poker–resolutely–he couldn’t afford to lose now; and, what puzzled me, he stopped drinking. The man simply looked tired, always hopelessly tired; and I could believe him sincere in all his foolish talk about his blessed Nirvana: which was the peace he craved, which was end enough for him.

Winter broke. May drew near; and one afternoon, when Grayson and I took our walk up through the Gap, he carried along a huge spy-glass of mine, which had belonged to a famous old desperado, who watched his enemies with it from the mountain-tops. We both helped capture him, and I defended him. He was sentenced to hang–the glass was my fee. We sat down opposite Bee Rock, and for the first time Grayson told me of that last scene with her. He spoke without bitterness, and he told me what she said, word for word, without a breath of blame for her. I do not believe that he judged her at all; she did not know–he always said; she did not KNOW; and then, when I opened my lips, Grayson reached silently for my wrist, and I can feel again the warning crush of his fingers, and I say nothing against her now.

I asked Grayson what his answer was.

“I asked her,” he said, solemnly, “if she had ever seen a purple rhododendron.”

I almost laughed, picturing the scene–the girl bewildered by his absurd question–Grayson calm, superbly courteous. It was a mental peculiarity of his–this irrelevancy–and it was like him to end a matter of life and death in just that way.

“I told her I should send her one. I am waiting for them to come out,” he added; and he lay back with his head against a stone and sighted the telescope on a dizzy point, about which buzzards were circling.

“There is just one bush of rhododendron up there,” he went on. “I saw it looking down from the Point last spring. I imagine it must blossom earlier than that across there on Bee Rock, being always in the sun. No, it’s not budding yet,” he added, with his eye to the glass.

“You see that ledge just to the left? I dropped a big rock from the Point square on a rattler who was sunning himself there last spring. I can see a foothold all the way up the cliff. It can be done,” he concluded, in a tone that made me turn sharply upon him.

“Do you really mean to climb up there?” I asked, harshly.

“If it blossoms first up there–I’ll get it where it blooms first.” In a moment I was angry and half sick with suspicion, for I knew his obstinacy; and then began what I am half ashamed to tell.

Every day thereafter Grayson took that glass with him, and I went along to humor him. I watched Bee Rock, and he that one bush at the throat of the peak–neither of us talking over the matter again. It was uncanny, that rivalry–sun and wind in one spot, sun and wind in another–Nature herself casting the fate of a half-crazed fool with a flower. It was utterly absurd, but I got nervous over it–apprehensive, dismal.

A week later it rained for two days, and the water was high. The next day the sun shone, and that afternoon Grayson smiled, looking through the glass, and handed it to me. I knew what I should see. One purple cluster, full blown, was shaking in the wind. Grayson was leaning back in a dream when I let the glass down. A cool breath from the woods behind us brought the odor of roots and of black earth; up in the leaves and sunlight somewhere a wood-thrush was singing, and I saw in Grayson’s face what I had not seen for a long time, and that was peace–the peace of stubborn purpose. He did not come for me the next day, nor the next; but the next he did, earlier than usual.