But his old friend lived in a rare, upland air, and he could not yet find rest in her clime.
She saw that.
"It's for after a while, isn't it, Alexander?
Oh, after a while you'll see that it is the breathing, living air! But do not feel now that you are in duty bound to come here.

Wait until you feel like coming, and never think that I'll be hurt--" "I am a marsh thing," he said.

"I feel dull and still and cold, and over me is a heavy atmosphere filled with motes.

Forgive me and let me come to you farther on and higher up." He went back to the gray crag, Glenfernie House and the room in the keep, the fire and his books, and a brooding traveling over the past, and, like a pool of gold in a long arctic night, the image, nested and warm, of Ian.

Love was lost, but there stayed the ancient, ancient friend.
Two weeks before Christmas Alice came home, bright as a rose.