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“I see,” said Patricia.

“After a while he got me a job with a friend of his in a Philadelphia iron-works,” said the boy; “but that was a ROTTEN job. So I came back to New York; and I’d written a sketch for an amateur theatrical thing, and a manager there wanted me to work it up–said he’d produce it. I tinkered away at that for a while, but there was no money in it, and Steele sent me out to see how I’d like working in one of the Humboldt lumber camps. I thought that sounded good. But I got my leg broken the first week, and had to wire him from the hospital for money. So, when I got well again, he sent me a night wire about this job, and I went to see Kahn the next day, and came up here.”

“I see,” she said again. “And you don’t think you’ll stay?”

“Honestly, I can’t, Patricia. Honest–you don’t know what it is! I could stand Borneo, or Alaska, or any place where the climate and customs and natives stirred things up once in a while. But this is like being dead! Why, it just makes me sick to see the word ‘New York’ on the covers of magazines–I’m going crazy here.”

She nodded seriously.

“Yes, I know. But you’ve got to do SOMETHING. And since your course was electrical engineering–! And the next job mayn’t be half so easy, you know–!”

“Well, it’ll be a little nearer Broadway, believe me. No, I’m sorry. I never knew two dandier people than you and your brother, and I like the work, but–!”

He drew a long breath on the last word, and Miss Chisholm sighed, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said, staring at the big seal ring on her finger. “I tell you frankly that I think you’re making a mistake. I don’t argue for Alan’s sake or mine, though we both like you thoroughly, and your being here would make a big difference this winter. But I think you’ve made a good start with the company, and it’s a good company, and I think, from what you’ve said to-day, and other hints you’re given me, that you’d make your mother very happy by writing her that you think you’ve struck your groove. However!”

She got up, brushed the leaves from her skirt, and went to her horse. They rode home through the columned aisles of the forest almost silently. The rough, straight trunks of the redwoods rose all about them, catching gold and red on their thick, fibrous bark from the setting sun. The horses’ feet made no sound on the corduroy roadway.

For several days nothing more was said of Paul’s going or staying. Miss Chisholm went her usual busy round. Paul wrote his letter of resignation and carried it to the dinner-table one night, hoping to read it later to her, and win her approval of its finely rounded sentences.

But a heavy mail came down the trail that evening, brought by the obliging doctor from Emville, who had been summoned to dress the wounds of one of the line-men who had got too close to the murderous “sixty thousand” and had been badly burned by “the juice.” And after the letters were read, and the good doctor had made his patient comfortable, he proved an excellent fourth hand at the game of bridge for which they were always hungering.

So at one o’clock Paul went upstairs with his letter still unapproved. He hesitated in the dim upper hallway, wondering if Patricia, who had left the men to beer and crackers half an hour earlier, had retired, or was, by happy chance, still gossiping with Mrs. Tolley or Min. While he loitered in the hall, the door of her room swung slowly open.

Paul had often been in this room, which was merely a kind of adjunct to the sleeping-porch beyond. He went to the doorway and said, “Patricia!”