her face was coming down close to his; he had a
wild fleeting hallucination that she----

"Don't imagine," she began, and his senses came back to him and he set
her down, "don't imagine that I can't cook. Where's your range?"

He showed her a scooped-out place in the side of the bluff. "There are
two bricks in the back, two on each side and two on the top," he
explained with some pride.

"I am afraid you have brought foolish habits of luxury out of the East
with you," was her reply. She made him build her a fire and bring some
water and meal and then she took things entirely out of his hands.

"It's a picnic," she said. Her gown she had folded back and pinned up
until a little tangle of silk and lace frou-froued beneath it
bewilderingly; her sleeves she had rolled back until the creamy tan of
her round slim arms showed to the elbow; her hat she had taken off, and
the sun danced in the gold lustres of her hair. She was all aglow; she
belonged out in the fresh air and the sunlight like this; she could
stand it; that dusky-gold radiance played from her like a burnish.
Steering sat down on the log bench and watched her, hypnotised by her
into haunting fancies of something, somebody, somewhere. She was one of
those beings whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them
close to you, not only for the present, but also for the past, one of
those people who are apt to make you feel that you have known them
before, forever, a feeling that flowers into elusive fragrances,
suggestions, reminiscences, flown on the first stir of a thought to
catch them.

"What a long time since I even so much as saw you," he sighed happily,
happy because here before him in the body again she was exactly the girl
he remembered, exactly the girl he had dreamed of all winter. "What have
you done all winter?" he asked.

"Nursed Father. He has stayed at home with me a good deal. It was a
lovely winter, wasn't it?"

Steering thought of the long, quiet, lonely days, the weeks, the months
during which he had seen her only to bow to her. Then he thought of the
calendar inside his office. Every day that he had seen her on his rare
trips up river to Canaan was marked with an imitation of the rising sun.
There were only eight rising suns for the whole winter. Then he thought
how the memory of those sun days had stayed with him and made him feel
blessed. Then he answered, "Yes, it has been lovely,--nice, open
weather. I have been out on the Di