d, Burning Daylight had a
mighty connotation--one to touch any woman's imagination, as it touched
hers, the gate between them, listening to the wistful and impassioned
simplicity of his speech. Dede was after all a woman, with a woman's
sex-vanity, and it was this vanity that was pleased by the fact that
such a man turned in his need to her.

And there was more that passed through her mind--sensations of
tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies of
vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer whisperings
and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten generations crystallized
into being and fluttering anew and always, undreamed and unguessed,
subtle and potent, the spirit and essence of life that under a thousand
deceits and masks forever makes for life. It was a strong temptation,
just to ride with this man in the hills. It would be that only and
nothing more, for she was firmly convinced that his way of life could
never be her way. On the other hand, she was vexed by none of the
ordinary feminine fears and timidities. That she could take care of
herself under any and all circumstances she never doubted. Then why
not? It was such a little thing, after all.

She led an ordinary, humdrum life at best. She ate and slept and
worked, and that was about all. As if in review, her anchorite
existence passed before her: six days of the week spent in the office
and in journeying back and forth on the ferry; the hours stolen before
bedtime for snatches of song at the piano, for doing her own special
laundering, for sewing and mending and casting up of meagre accounts;
the two evenings a week of social diversion she permitted herself; the
other stolen hours and Saturday afternoons spent with her brother at
the hospital; and the seventh day, Sunday, her day of solace, on Mab's
back, out among the blessed hills. But it was lonely, this solitary
riding. Nobody of her acquaintance rode. Several girls at the
University had been persuaded into trying it, but after a Sunday or two
on hired livery hacks they had lost interest. There was Madeline, who
bought her own horse and rode enthusiastically for several months, only
to get married and go away to live in Southern California. After years
of it, one did get tired of this eternal riding alone.

He was such a boy, this big giant of a millionaire who had half the
rich men of San Francisco afraid of him. Such a boy! She had never
imagined t