as already in the
stirrup. "Sorry to be in such a hurry just now, too--because there
is so much I want to say to you on that subject--awful sorry--but
the Gov'nor will raise Cain if he knows what I've done. I'll just
write you a long letter to-night--and I'll be over, maybe,
soon--ta--ta--but this mare, confound her--see how she cuts up--so
sorry I can't stay longer--but I'll write--to-night."

He threw her a kiss as he rode off.

She sat dazed, numbed, with the shallowness of it all--the shale of
sham which did not even conceal the base sub-stratum of deceit below.

Nothing like it had ever come into her life before.

She dropped down behind the rock, but instead of tears there came
steel. In it all she could only say with her lips white, a defiant
poise of her splendid head, and with a flash of the eyes which came
with the Conway aroused: "Oh, and I kissed him--and--and--I loved
him!"

She sat on the rock again and looked at the sunset. She was too hurt
now to go home--she wished to be alone.

She was a strong girl--mentally--and with a deep nature; but she was
proud, and so she sat and crushed it in her pride and strength,
though to do it shook her as the leaves were now being shaken by the
breeze which had sprung up at sunset.

She thought she could conquer--that she had conquered--then, as the
breeze died away, and the leaves hung still and limp again, her pride
went with the breeze and she fell again on her knees by the big rock,
fell and buried her face there in the cool moss and cried: "Oh, and
I loved that thing!"

Ten minutes later she sat pale and smiling. The Conway pride had
conquered, but it was a dangerous conquest, for steel and tears had
mingled to make it.

In her despair she even plucked another cotton bloom from her bosom
as if trying to force herself to be happy again in saying:

"One, I love--two, I love,
Three, I love, I say--"

But this only hurt her, because she remembered that when she had said
it before she had had an idol which now lay shattered, as the petals
of the cotton-blossom which she had plucked and thrown away.

Then the breeze sprang up again and with it, borne on it, came the
click--click--click of a hammer tapping a rock. It was a small gladey
valley through which a gulley ran. Boulders cropped out here and
there, and haws, red and white elms, and sassafras grew and shaded
it.

Down in the gulch, not a hundred yards from her, she saw a pair of
broad sho