ot doubting anything?" he asked quickly.

"Not doubting, O youth! Only a little innocent wonder."

"But isn't life an enchantment? Isn't it all miracles? Oh, I understand
poets at last. They can't tell you their secret unless you already know
it. They sing in big numbers. They say a million is true, and you say,
'Yes, that's very pretty, but it's poetry--exaggeration; he really means
that a hundred is true,' and you never know any better till the light
comes. Then you see that the poet was literal and quite prosaic all the
time. The whole million was always true, in beauty and bigness and
wonder."

"Stop!" she protested. "You're making me feel as old as the world
itself, ancient and scarred with wisdom."

"You!" he burst in, "you're as young as the world. You are foolish and I
am the wise one if you can't see that. Indeed, you're looking
beautifully foolish this minute. You are thinking all kinds of doubts
underneath a lot of things you won't tell me. You're secretive. You hide
a lot from me."

She laughed, a little uneasily.

"You are a babe for wisdom," she retorted; "but you're not to be
enlightened in a day--nor by me. I'll give you a year. You shall tell me
then which of us two is the older. Now you must be at your packing. Can
you be ready by Monday?"

"Monday? and I'd been wondering what would be the name of the day. So
it's merely Monday? How many Mondays there have been, how many, many
Mondays, that were like any other day! And now this Monday steals
up--yes, I'll be ready."

"I see you are past reason----"

"Say above it----"

"Anyway, get on with your packing. So much is true." He would have
ridden back with her, but she demurred.

"It's so far," he urged.

"It isn't half far enough," she mocked him, "I have so much thinking to
do!"

"Monday, Monday, Monday, then!" he chanted, as he went out to lift her
into the saddle. But when he had done this he suddenly bowed his head to
kiss her hand, as he had seen his father long ago kiss his mother's
hand.

"You are all the world, just now, all I know of it," he said.

She looked back to where he stood, straight and buoyant, his head thrown
back in joyous challenge.

"And you are youth--dear, dear youth!" she cried; but this he could not
hear.

A little farther on she breathed softly, "Poor dead Kitty--don't be
afraid!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE JOURNEY WONDER

During those last days Ewing brushed only the airy slopes of illusion,
strive