From the window of the train Eleanor More looked out on green fields. They had emerged from the dark mouth of the tunnel into a spring day. The evening light was on the fields, and they stretched away to distant woods. The shadows along the ground caught a glow from the sky.

“Looks like a clear day to-morrow,” said Richard.

She nodded quietly. Her eyes were on the level green fields that moved past them, mile after mile.

He put out his hand and covered hers where it lay on the seat between them.

“Tired?” he asked.

She shook her head. Then she drew a long breath and looked at him with a smile.

“How good it seems!” she said slowly. “How good it seems—to get away from them all!”

“We are beginning all over,” he responded.

“Yes.... I can’t seem to worry about what’s happening to them.... Just a little worry—because I don’t worry—that’s all!”

“You’ll get over that in a mile or so,” he replied confidently.

It would seem she did get over it—or at least if she did not, she concealed it skilfully. The little lines in her face smoothed, one by one, and a tranquil look came to it.

She sat for hours as the train moved over the level plain, the look of abstraction in her eyes and the gentleness and strength in her face revealing themselves—as the lines of a landscape are sometimes revealed by a change of light or by the passing of a storm—all the surface life slipped from it.

And Richard More, watching, had a sudden sense of the mysterious force of very familiar things.... This was Eleanor’s face—that he had known and loved for years; and it was the face of a strange woman, an unknown majestic presence who moved beside him always.

And then the mask of greatness would slip from her, and she would chatter for days about nothing, trivial things—delighting like a child in the discoveries he brought and laid in her lap when he alighted at some lonely station—a flower or a bit of mineral; and the train would plunge on again, dipping around the curve of a hill, climbing along a dizzy cliff, while she sat beside him, her hand a little reached out to him, her breath half stayed by a glance of delight.

“It is a voyage of discovery,” he said in her ear.

“How foolish—to want to stay in one place—always!” Her hand swept up to the piling masses of snow, glacial vastnesses that gleamed high above them. “How foolish!” she said softly.

And the strange look of dignity and strength came swiftly into her face.

“A voyage of discovery,” he repeated.... “Do you think we shall find it?”

She looked at him with puzzled eyes.

“Find—?” she said vaguely.

“The Chinese coat?”

“Oh—!” she laughed out. “Perhaps so. It doesn’t matter—does it?” She nodded toward the distant peaks of snow—a faint tinge of pink was beginning to rest on them.... “It does not matter!” she said softly.

“No—it does not matter.... But I should like to find it—for you.”

When she looked at him her eyes were full of tears.

“Foolish boy!” she said, “to care—for that!”

“We will go back—if you say so,” he responded. He was watching her closely.

She reached out a quick hand.

“No—Oh, no! We must go on!” she cried under her breath.

He laughed out. “I thought so! You care for it—as much as I do.... Only

“I want to go on,” she said swiftly. “What would the children say—if we should come back now?”

“They would be a little surprised—to see us walk in,” he admitted.

“Very well, madam—to please you, we will go on.”

They talked in any foolish way that pleased them, and they did not hurry on the journey.

He had a time-table of the dates of sailing of the Japanese line they were to travel by, and a stateroom engaged on each boat sailing for the next month.

One after one he relinquished them, by telegraph, as the days slipped by.

They stopped off for two weeks at a high mountain inn that they liked; and several times they rested for days in some spot that pleased her fancy.

He watched her face. When it grew fatigued, he gave directions to the Japanese courier who had joined them at a point on the journey, and they left the train at the next station.

The courier came and went like a shadow along the route—sometimes ahead of them and sometimes following, but always at hand when he was needed.

Eleanor grew to watch for his face as if he were a kind of meteor that played a game with them.

“There he is!” she would exclaim at some station as she looked out and caught a glimpse of him. “There he is, Richard!” And if the train went on without him, she would press her face to the glass and lean forward to watch till he was out of sight.

“What a wonderful people!” she said. “When I see him I seem to understand—almost! And then he is gone! Is he going with us—all the way?”

“Perhaps so,” said Richard. “I had arranged with him only to San Francisco. But we can keep him on if you like.... There will be plenty like him on the boat. They are all Japs on the boat.”

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