"Yes," he said, "and down there I will be what?"
"I don't know," she answered wistfully, "but sometimes I can see you going
on and on and on toward fame and the rewards it will bring you and you
seem to get farther and farther and farther away from--from the mountains
and our friendship; until you are so far away that I can't see you any
more at all. I don't like to lose my mountain friends, you know."
He smiled. "But no matter how famous I might become--no matter what fame
might bring me--I could not forget you and your mountains."
"I would not want you to remember me," she answered "if you were famous.
That is--I mean"--she added hesitatingly--"if you were famous just because
you _wanted_ to be. But I know you could never forget the mountains. And
that would be the trouble; don't you see? If you _could_ forget, it would
not matter. Ask Mr. Lagrange, he knows."
For some time Aaron King sat, without speaking, looking about at the world
that was so far from that other world--the world he had always known. The
girl, too,--seeming to understand the thoughts that he himself, perhaps,
could not have expressed,--was silent.
Then he said slowly, "I don't think that I care for fame as I did before
you taught me to know the mountains.
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