The Summit of Success

There followed three years of silence, three years of waiting for that
message which never came. As though she had dropped into an ocean of
oblivion, Beth Norvell disappeared. Winston had no longer the
slightest hope that a word from her would ever come, and there were
times when he wondered if it was not better so--if, after all, she had
not chosen rightly. Love untarnished lived in his heart; yet, as she
had told him out in the desert, love could never change the deed. That
remained--black, grim, unblotted, the unalterable death stain. Why,
then, should they meet? Why seek even to know of each other? Close
together, or far apart, there yawned a bottomless gulf between.
Silence was better; silence, and the mercy of partial forgetfulness.

Winston had toiled hard during those years, partly from a natural
liking, partly to forget his heartaches. Feverishly he had taken up
the tasks confronting him, sinking self in the thought of other things.
Such work had conquered success, for he did his part in subjecting
nature to man, thus winning a reputation already ranking him high among
the mining experts of the West. His had become a name to conjure with
in the mountains and mining camps. During the long months he had hoped
fiercely. Yet he had made no endeavor to seek her out, or to uncover
her secret. Deep within his heart lay a respect for her choice, and he
would have held it almost a crime to invade the privacy that her
continued silence had created. So he resolutely locked the secret
within his own soul, becoming more quiet in manner, more reserved in
speech, with every long month of waiting, constantly striving to forget
the past amid a multitude of business and professional cares.