oil--surely there was no finer type of that
vanishing race in all the Indian pueblos of the Southwest. But the girl
beside her! Was it really so many years ago that I stood by the bushes
on the Flat Rock's edge and saw that which I see so clearly now? Then
these years have been gracious indeed to me. The sun's level beams fell
on the masses of golden waves that swept in soft little ripples back
from the white brow to a coil of gold on the white neck, held, like the
Indian girl's, with a headband of wrought silver, and goldveined
turquoise; it fell on the clear, smooth skin, the pink bloom of the
cheek, the red lips, the white teeth, the big dark eyes with their
fringe of long lashes beneath straight-penciled dark brows; on the
curves of the white throat and the round white arms. Only a master's
hand could make you see these two, beautiful in their sharp contrast of
deep brown and scarlet against the dainty white and gold.

"Oh, Little Blue Flower, it will not make me change."

I caught the words as I stepped toward the two, and the Indian's soft,
mournful answer:

"But you are Miss St. Vrain now. You go away in the morning--and I love
you always."

The heart in me stopped just when all its flood had reached my face.

"Miss St. Vrain," I repeated, aloud.

The two sprang up. That afternoon they had been dressed for a girls'
frolic in some Grecian fashion. I cannot tell a Watteau pleat from
window-curtain. I am only a man, and I do not name draperies well. But
these two standing before me were gowned exactly alike, and yet I know
that one was purely and artistically Greek, and one was purely and
gracefully Indian.

"I beg your pardon. I am Mr. Clarenden," I managed to say.

At the name Little Blue Flower's eyes looked as they did on that hot May
night out at Pawnee Rock when she heard Beverly Clarenden's boyish voice
ring out, defiantly:

"Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances."

But the great light that had leaped into the girl's eyes died slowly out
as she gazed at me.

"You are not Beverly Clarenden," she said, in a low voice.

"No, I'm Gail, the little one. Bev is up at Fort Leavenworth now," I
replied.

She turned away without a word and, gathering her draperies about her,
sped up the pathway toward the fields above the creek.

* * * * *

And we two were alone together--the dark-eyed girl of my boyhood vision,
deep-shrined in the boy-heart's holy of holies