or. For it appeared that a MAN was there too, and had just risen from
the fallen tree where he had been sitting.

CHAPER VIII.

She had so far forgotten herself in yielding to the spell of the place,
and in the revelation of her naked soul and inner nature, that it was
with something of the instinct of outraged modesty that she seemed to
shrink before this apparition of the outer world and outer worldliness.
In an instant the nearer past returned; she remembered where she was,
how she had come there, from whom she had come, and to whom she was
returning. She could see that she had not only aimlessly wandered from
the world but from the road; and for that instant she hated this man who
had reminded her of it, even while she knew she must ask his assistance.
It relieved her slightly to observe that he seemed as disturbed and
impatient as herself, and as he took a pencil from between his lips and
returned it to his pocket he scarcely looked at her.

But with her return to the world of convenances came its repression,
and with a gentlewoman's ease and modulated voice she leaned over her
mustang's neck and said: "I have strayed from my party and am afraid I
have lost my way. We were going to the hotel at San Mateo. Would you be
kind enough to direct me there, or show me how I can regain the road by
which I came?"

Her voice and manner were quite enough to arrest him where he stood with
a pleased surprise in his fresh and ingenuous face. She looked at him
more closely. He was, in spite of his long silken mustache, so absurdly
young; he might, in spite of that youth, be so absurdly man-like! What
was he doing there? Was he a farmer's son, an artist, a surveyor, or a
city clerk out for a holiday? Was there perhaps a youthful female of his
species somewhere for whom he was waiting and upon whose tryst she was
now breaking? Was he--terrible thought!--the outlying picket of some
family picnic? His dress, neat, simple, free from ostentatious ornament,
betrayed nothing. She waited for his voice.

"Oh, you have left San Mateo miles away to the right," he said with
quick youthful sympathy, "at least five miles! Where did you leave your
party?"

His voice was winning, and even refined, she thought. She answered it
quite spontaneously: "At a fork of two roads. I see now I took the wrong
turning."

"Yes, you took the road to Crystal Spring. It's just down there in the
valley, not more than a mile. You'd have been there no