ut she watched in a mechanical,
absent way. She looked at the scene as from a long way off, without
interest, herself an alien, no longer an intimate part of the earth and
trees and flowers she loved so well.

So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity,
strangely impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista she
looked at a buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes encountered
it for the first time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon a yellow cluster
of Diogenes' lanterns that grew on the edge of an open space. It was the
way of flowers always to give her quick pleasure-thrills, but no thrill
was hers now. She pondered the flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a
hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some whim-flower
that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the voice of the stream--a
hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent
fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she
knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the deep
canyon-bottom, that and nothing more.

Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes' lanterns into the open
space. Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses,
chestnut-sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and golden
in the sunshine, their spring-coats a sheen of high-lights shot through
with color-flashes that glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost
with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her
girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows and
sung her joys. A moistness welled into her eyes at the sight, and
she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and
sorrow, to be part of the world again.

The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a groan
dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips
softly and lingeringly to his hair.

"Come, let us go," she said, almost in a whisper.

She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she
rose. His face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the
struggle through which he had passed. They did not look at each other,
but walked directly to the horses. She leaned against Dolly's neck while
he tightened the girths. Then she gathered the reins in her hand and
waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an appeal for forgiveness in
his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes answered. Her foot