tful people. It argued
much for her ancestry, for her own latent powers, that she responded
with such bewildering readiness to the suggestions which rose like
sparks of fire from that radiant hour.

She had been made to feel dimly, vaguely, but multitudinously, the
fibres and reaches of another world--the world of art, and that
indefinable thing which the books call culture; and finally, in that
splendid young Quaker, she was brought to know a man who could be
jocular without being coarse, and whose glance was as sincere as it was
flattering and alluring.

She did not think of him as husband to Alice Heath, who seemed so much
older in spirit as in body (more like an elder sister than a bride
elect), and his consideration of her was that of brother rather than the
devotion of a lover. How far he stood removed from Ed Winchell and the
young fellows of Sibley! "And yet I can understand him," she thought.
"He ain't funny, like Mr. Congdon. He don't say queer things, and he
don't make game of people. And he don't orate like Judge Crego. He isn't
laughing at us now, the way the others are. I bet they're havin' a good
time over our blunders."

She saw Marshall Haney in a new light also. For the first time he seemed
like an old man, sitting there, supine, garrulous, in the midst of those
self-contained people. "Gosh! how he did talk! He took too much wine, I
reckon, but that didn't make all the difference." In truth, his
imperiousness, his contempt, had been melted and charmed away by the
genial smiles of his auditors. Even Mrs. Crego had listened with a show
of interest. It was as if a lonely old man had at last found
companionship.

What did all this mean? "Are they interested in him only because he's
what they call a desperado? Did they ask us there to hear him tell
stories of his wild life?" Questions of this kind also troubled her.

The moon slid behind the mountain range while still the girl sat with
pale face and wide dark eyes thinking, thinking, the wings of her
expanding soul fluttering with vague unrest. Only once in a lifetime can
such an experience come to a human being. Her swift ride to Marshall
Haney's side that summer night--now so far away--was momentous, but its
import was simple compared with the experiences through which she had
just passed.

She rose at last, chilled and stiffened, and went to her bed with a
sense of foreboding rather than of new-found happiness.

* * * *