“You're the most wonderful woman in the world,” said Heyl, “and the most beautiful and splendid.”
He must have meant it, for he was looking down at her as he said it, and we know that the skin had been peeled off her nose by the mountain winds and sun, that her lips were cracked and her cheeks rough, and that she was red-eyed and worn-looking. And she must have believed him, for she brought his cheek down to hers with such a sigh of content, though she said, “But are we at all suited to each other?”
“Probably not,” Heyl answered, briskly. “That's why we're going to be so terrifically happy. Some day I'll be passing the Singer building, and I'll glance up at it and think how pitiful it would look next to Long's Peak. And then I'll be off, probably, to these mountains.”
“Or some day,” Fanny returned, “we'll be up here, and I'll remember, suddenly, how Fifth Avenue looks on a bright afternoon between four and five. And I'll be off, probably, to the Grand Central station.”
And then began one of those beautiful and foolish conversations which all lovers have whose love has been a sure and steady growth. Thus: “When did you first begin to care,” etc. And, “That day we spent at the dunes, and you said so and so, did you mean this and that?”
Albert Edward Cobbins announced his approach by terrific stampings and scufflings, ostensibly for the purpose of ridding his boots of snow. He entered looking casual, and very nipped.
“You're here for the night,” he said. “A regular blizzard. The greatest piece of luck I've had in a month.” He busied himself with the ham and eggs and the teapot. “Hungry?”
“Not a bit,” said Fanny and Heyl, together.
“H'm,” said Albert Edward, and broke six eggs into the frying pan just the same.
After supper they aided Albert Edward in the process of washing up. When everything was tidy he lighted his most malignant pipe and told them seafaring yarns not necessarily true. Then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and fell asleep there by the fire, effacing himself as effectually as one of three people can in a single room. They talked; low-toned murmurings that they seemed to find exquisitely meaningful or witty, by turn. Fanny, rubbing a forefinger (his) along her weather-roughened nose, would say, “At least you've seen me at my worst.”