being much
shaken, was seeking about for the safe ground of commonplace. The
man's face had suddenly become almost drawn. He was conscious of
having been too close to the edge in more ways than one, and with the
consciousness came the old sense of necessity for silence. He was
approaching one of the moods that puzzled the girl: the attitude of
fighting her off; the turtle's churlish defense of drawing into
himself.

It was Duska who spoke first. She laughed as she said lightly:

"For a man who is a great artist, you are really very young and very
silly."

His voice was hard.

"I'm worse than that," he acceded.

For a moment more, there was awkward silence; then, Duska asked
simply:

"Aren't you going to paint any more?"

He was gazing at the canvas moodily, almost savagely.

"No," he answered shortly; "if I were to touch it now, I should ruin
it."

The girl said nothing. She half-turned away from him, and her lips set
themselves tightly.

As he began packing the impedimenta, storm-pregnant clouds rolled
swiftly forth over the valley, and emptied themselves in a deluge on
the two wanderers. The girl, riding under dripping trees, her poncho
and "nor'wester" shining like metal under the slanting lines of rain,
went on ahead. In her man's saddle, she sat almost rigidly erect, and
the gauntleted hand that held the reins of the heavy cavalry bridle
clutched them with unconscious tautness of grip. Saxon's face was a
picture of struggle, and neither spoke until they had come to the road
at the base of the hill where two horses could go abreast. Then, he
found himself quoting:

"Her hand was still on her sword hilt, the spur was still on
her heel,
She had not cast her harness of gray war-dinted steel;
High on her red-splashed charger, beautiful, bold and browned,
Bright-eyed out of the battle, the Young Queen rode to be
crowned."

He did not realize that he had repeated the lines aloud, until she
turned her face and spoke with something nearer to bitterness than he
had ever heard in her voice:

"Rode to be crowned--did you say?" And she laughed unhappily.

CHAPTER VI

For more than a week after the ride to the cliff, Duska withdrew
herself from the orbit in which Saxon revolved, and the man, feeling
that she wished to dismiss him, in part at least, used the "air line"
much less frequently than in the days that had been. Once, when Steele
had left the cabin