her who
stood watching till they had swung out of the lane and on to the main
trail.

CHAPTER XIII

A DAY IN SEPTEMBER

A September day in Alberta. There is no other day to be compared to
it in any other month or in any other land. Other lands have their
September days, and Alberta has days in other months, but the
combination of September day in Alberta is sui generis. The foothill
country with plain, and hill, and valley, and mighty mountain, laced
with stream, and river, and lake; the over-arching sheet of blue with
cloud shapes wandering and wistful, the kindly sun pouring its genial
sheen of yellow and gold over the face of the earth below, purple in
the mountains and gold and pearly grey, and all swimming in air blown
through the mountain gorges and over forests of pine, tingling with
ozone and reaching the heart and going to the head like new wine--these
things go with a September day in Alberta.

And like new wine the air seemed to Jack Romayne as the Packard like a
swallow skimmed along the undulating prairie trail, smooth, resilient,
of all the roads in the world for motor cars the best. For that day at
least and in that motor car life seemed good to Jack Romayne. Not many
such days would be his, and he meant to take all it gave regardless of
cost. His sister's proposal to call at the Gwynnes' house he would have
rejected could he have found a reasonable excuse. The invitation to
the Gwynne girls to accompany them on their shoot he resented also,
and still more deeply he resented the arrangement of the party that set
Kathleen next to him, a close fit in the back seat of the car. But at
the first feeling of her warm soft body wedged closely against him,
all emotions fled except one of pulsating joy. And this, with the air
rushing at them from the western mountains, wrought in him the reckless
resolve to take what the gods offered no matter what might follow. As he
listened to the chatter about him he yielded to the intoxication of his
love for this fair slim girl pressing soft against his arm and shoulder.
He allowed his fancy to play with surmises as to what would happen
should he turn to her and say, "Dear girl, do you know how fair you are,
how entrancingly lovely? Do you know I am madly in love with you, and
that I can hardly refrain from putting this arm, against which you so
quietly lean your warm soft body, about you?" He looked boldly at the
red curves of her lips and allowed himself to riot