She stood there poised--so it seemed--between mountain-crest and the sky.

The lake lay quiet and shadowed, deep below her, as though God had dropped a tear and the mountain was holding it reverently cupped, sheltering it from the keen winds of the heights.

Beyond, painted with the delicate shadings of distance and yellow sunlight, Indian Valley lay quietly across the lap of the world, its farms and roads and fences sketched in lightly, as with the swift pencil strokes of an artist; its meandering, willowfringed streams making contrast with the yellowed fields of early harvest time.
She stood there poised like a bird on the rim of the world.

Her slimness, her sure grace, her yellow hair shining under the beach hat she wore tilted back from her face, struck him like a blow in the face from that pleasurable past wherein woman beauty had been so abundant.
She was of the town; moreover, he felt that she was of the town from which he had fled in guilt and terror.

She stood for a long minute, taking in the full sweep of the rugged peak.