t. Take it
moderately; we're going about twelve miles and it's pretty warm yet."

There was not much talking while they were within the city limits--nor
after they were past, for that matter. Rosamond, ahead with her husband,
kept up a more or less fitful conversation with him, but the pair behind
said little. Richard made no allusion to his letter of the morning
beyond a declaration of his gratitude to the whole party for falling in
with his plans. But the silence was somehow more suggestive of the great
subject waiting for expression than any exchange of words could have
been, out here in the open. Only once did the man's impatience to begin
overcome his resolution to await the fitting hour.

Turning in his saddle as Colonel fell momentarily behind, passing the
West Wood marshes, Richard allowed his eyes to rest upon horse and rider
with full intent to take in the picture they made.

"I haven't ventured to let myself find out just how you look," he said.
"The atmosphere seems to swim around you; I see you through a sort of
haze. Do you suppose there can be anything the matter with my eyesight?"

"I should think there must be," she replied demurely. "It seems a
serious symptom. Hadn't you better turn back?"

"While you go on? Not if I fall off my horse. I have a suspicion that
it's made up of a curious compound of feelings which I don't dare to
describe. But--may I tell you?--I _must_ tell you--I never saw anything
so beautiful in my life as--yourself, to-day. I--" He broke off
abruptly. "Do you see that old rosebush there by those burnt ruins of a
house? Amber-white roses, and sweet as--I saw them there yesterday when
I went by. Let me get them for you."

He rode away into the deserted yard and up to a tangle of neglected
shrubbery. He had some difficulty in getting Thunderbolt--who was as
restless a beast as his name implied--to stand still long enough to
allow him to pick a bunch of the buds; he would have nothing but buds
just breaking into bloom. These he presently brought back to Roberta.
She fancied that he had planned to stop here for this very purpose.
Clearly he had the artist's eye for finishing touches. He watched her
fasten the roses upon the breast of the blue-cloth habit, then he turned
determinedly away.

"If I don't look at you again," said he, his eyes straight before him,
"it's because I can't do it--and keep my head. You accused me once of
losing it under a winter moon; this is a summer sun--