lifted from eyes still new and strange against
the morning. Sometimes Chantel the handsome rode glowering beside them,
sometimes Gilly, erect and solid in the saddle, laid upon their talk all
the weight of his honest, tired commonplaces.

But one morning she cantered up alone, laughing at her escape. His pony
bolted, and they raced along together as comrades happily join forces in
a headlong dream. Quivering bamboo swept behind them; the river, on
their other hand, met and passed in hurrying panorama. They had no time
for words, but only laughter. Words, indeed, had never yet advanced them
beyond that moment on the pagoda. And now, when their ponies fell into
a shambling trot, came the first impulse of speech.

"How lucky!" she cried. "How lucky we came this way! Now I can really
test you!"

He turned. Her glowing face was now averted, her gesture was not for
him, but for the scene. He studied that, to understand her.

The river, up which they had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a
shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing
light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and
crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these
storks meditated,--sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high
on the frailest penciling of legs. In the whole expanse, no movement
came but when a distant bird, leaving his philosophic pose, plunged
downward after a fish. Beyond them rose a shapeless mound or isle, like
some half-organic monster grounded in his native ooze.

"There!" said the woman, pointing. "Are you all excuses, like the
others? Or do you dare?"

"I am not afraid of anything--now," retorted Rudolph, and with truth,
after the dash of their twilight encounter. "Dare what?"

"Go see what's on that island," she answered. "I dared them all. Twice
I've seen natives land there and hurry away. Mr. Nesbit was too lazy to
try; Dr. Chantel wearing his best clothes. Maurice Heywood refused to
mire his horse for a whim. Whim? It's a mystery! Come, now. Do
you dare?"

In a rare flush of pride, Rudolph wheeled his stubborn mount and bullied
him down the bank. A poor horseman, he would have outstripped Curtius to
the gulf. But no sooner had his dancing pony consented to make the first
rebellious, sidelong plunge, than he had small joy of his boast.
Fore-legs sank floundering, were hoisted with a terrified wrench of the
shoulders, in the same moment that hind-l