already frightened the bear away.

Walt stood in the moonlight, smiling foolishly.

"I guess I came too late," he said.

"I'm quite sure the bear would have left of its own accord, Walt. They're always quite tame in the national parks, you know." As soon as she said it, she knew it was a mistake. Even though he had done nothing, it would have cost her little to thank him. The words had come instinctively; she hadn't thought how her answer would affect him. Walt turned on his heel stiffly and walked back to his tent.

With a little forethought—a little kindness—Bertha might even then have rescued her miracle. She knew that. She knew she had lost him now, for good. For the first time in her life she saw the dream as a barrier to her happiness, not an ideal. It held her imprisoned; it gave her nothing in exchange.

She slept fitfully for the rest of the night. As soon as the sun was up, she pulled on her woolen robe and went to the dressing room to wash. She walked back along the gravel path, averting her eyes from the other camps and the men hunched over the smoking breakfast fires. She hated Yosemite. She hated all the people crowded around her. She had made up her mind to pack her tent and head for home. This was just another vacation lost, another year wasted.

She went into her tent and put on slacks and a bright, cotton blouse. Then she sat disconsolate at her camp table surveying the mess the bear had made of her food box. There was nothing that she could rescue. She could drive to the village for breakfast, but the shops wouldn't open for another hour.

Behind her she heard Walt starting his Coleman stove. Yesterday he would have offered her breakfast; now he'd ignored her. All along the stream camp fires were blazing in the stone rings. Bertha wondered if she could ask the couple on the other side of her campsite for help. They had attempted to be friendly once before, and Bertha hadn't responded with a great deal of cordiality. They weren't the type she liked—a frizzy-headed, coarse-voiced blonde, and a paunchy old man who hadn't enough sense to know what a fool he looked parading around camp in the faded bathing trunks he wore all day.

Suddenly a light flashed in Bertha's face. A metal shovel slid out of nothingness and deposited a tiny, rectangular box on the table. For a long minute she stared at the box stupidly, vaguely afraid. Her mind must be playing her tricks. Such things 

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