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She had entered the town with high hopes; but they had not been hopes of love. She had been convinced, then, that true love was merely the dream of poets and writers with too much imagination. She had had experiences with men, violent flirtations which had proved the inconstancy of human hearts, and had grown to mock those ardent fools who had proposed marriage and undying devotion.

She had been very sure of herself then. Life had been a glorious thing when she had accepted men’s tributes to her beauty and had believed her heart inviolable. Now it was hateful.

Love, to her, had been a repulsive disease whose proper name was Sex—a disease from which she had believed herself immune. Now it had struck her down, and she had hugged the affliction which had taught her the meaning of life so that she could never hope to rid herself of its hurt.

Bitterly she regretted the impulse which had sent her to the Harley bungalow on the day of the earthquake. But for that, Harley might have taken her again when the hurt of Grace’s death had been dulled by time. She would never have acted so had she not believed that Grace had survived. Oh, what use in thinking of what might have been? It was all a terrible mess.

Patricia repressed the impulse to look back at the distant houses, the bold rock of Paritutu and the gleaming sea beyond, as the car dipped into the valley of the Meeting of the Waters. She had finished with New Plymouth. She looked ahead at the magnificent mass of Egmont, rising above fertile, wooded lands, majestic, silent, age-old—a constant reminder of the transcience of human life—and an indefinable balm fell upon her heart.

She gazed upon the ever-changing aspect of the lone and glorious mountain as the car traversed the winding road at its foot; she watched the light clouds forming upon it and vanishing—airy masses which obscured it for a little while, then passed, leaving it