oice had said of me, and the words burned now,
hot with shame, in my memory. The recollection of my fall in the dance,
of the crying lips of the pretty girl in pink tarlatan, while she stood
holding her ruined flounce, became positive agony. What did she think of
my boorishness? Was I, for her also, merely a magnificent animal? Had
she noticed how ill at ease I felt in my evening clothes? O young Love,
young Love, your sharpest torments are not with arrows, but with pin
pricks!

A trailing blackberry vine, running like a crimson vein close to the
earth, caught my foot, and I stooped for a minute. When I looked up she
was standing clear against the reflected light of the sunrise, where a
low hill rose above the stretches of broomsedge. Her sorrel mare was
beside her, licking contentedly at a bright branch of sassafras; and I
saw that she had evidently dismounted but the moment before. As I
approached, she fastened her riding skirt above her high boots, and
kneeling down on the dusty roadside, lifted the mare's foot and examined
it with searching and anxious eyes. Her three-cornered riding hat had
slipped to her shoulders, where it was held by a broad black band of
elastic, and I saw her charming head, with its wreath of plaits, defined
against the golden cloud that hung above the thin stretch of pines. At
my back the full sunrise broke, and when she turned toward me, her gaze
was dazzled for a moment by the flood of light.

"Let me have a look," I said, as I reached her, "is the mare hurt?"

"She went lame a few minutes ago. There's a stone in her foot, but I
can't get it out."

"Perhaps I can."

Rising from her knees, she yielded me her place, and then stood looking
down on me while I removed the stone.

"She'll still limp, I fear, it was a bad one," I said as I finished.

Without replying, she turned from me and ran a few steps along the road,
calling, "Come, Dolly," in a caressing voice. The mare followed with
difficulty, flinching as she put her sore foot to the ground.

"See how it hurts her," she said, coming back to me. "I'll have to lead
her slowly--there's no other way."

"Why not ride at a walk?"

She shook her head. "My feet are better than a lame horse. It's not more
than two miles anyway."

"And you danced all night?"

I hung the reins over my arm and we turned together, facing the sunrise.

"Yes, but the way to rest is to run out-of-doors. Are you often up with
the dawn, too?"

"No, but I