irls could not understand,
which even Sally, whom I loved, could never share with me. How could
they or she comprehend hunger, who had never gone without for a moment?
Or sympathise with the lust of battle when they had never encountered an
obstacle? Already I heard the call of the streets, and my blood
responded to it in the midst of the scented atmosphere. These things
were for Sally, but for me was the joy of the struggle, the passion to
achieve that I might return, with my spoils and pile them higher and
higher before her feet. The grasping was what I loved, not the
possession; the instant of triumph, not the fruits of the conquest. Love
throbbed in my heart, but my mind, as if freeing itself from a
restraint, followed the Great South Midland and Atlantic, covering that
night under the stars nearly twenty thousand miles of road. The
elemental man in me chafed under the social curb, and I longed at that
instant to bear the woman I had won out into the rough joys of the
world. My muscles would soon grow flabby in this scented warmth. The
fighter would war with the dreamer, and I would regret the short, fierce
battle with my competitors in the business of life.

A slight sound made me turn, and I saw Bonny Page standing alone in the
doorway, and looking straight at me with her dancing eyes.

"I don't know you yet, Ben," she said in the direct, gallant manner of a
perfect horsewoman, "but I'm going to like you."

"Please try," I answered, "and I'll do my best not to make it hard."

"I don't think it will be hard, but even if it were, I'd do it for
Sally's sake. Sally is my darling."

"And mine. So we're alike in one thing at least."

"I'm perfectly furious with Aunt Mitty. I mean to tell her so the next
time I've taken a high jump."

"Poor Miss Mitty. How can she help herself? She was born that way."

"Well, it was a very bad way to be born--to want to break Sally's heart.
Do you know, I think it was delightful--the way you did it. If I'm ever
married, I want to run away, too,--only I'll run away on horseback,
because that will be far more exciting."

She ran on merrily, partly I knew to take my measure while she watched
me, partly to ease the embarrassment which her exquisite social instinct
had at once discerned. She was charming, friendly, almost affectionate,
yet I was conscious all the time that, in spite of herself, she was a
little critical, a trifle aloof. Her perfect grooming, the very fineness
of her