thletic young fellow, with a handsome, smooth-shaven face, a
slightly vacant laugh, and a figure that showed superbly in his
loose-fitting riding clothes.

"When I get the time, I'll buy a horse and begin," I replied; "but all
hours are working hours to me now, Sally will tell you."

"It's exactly as if I'd married a railroad engine," remarked Sally,
laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this
absorption in larger matters--this unchangeable habit of thought that I
could not shake off even in a drawing-room--puzzled them, because of
their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which
responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to
mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this
leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was
by nature, was reflected in the smiling faces around me as in a mirror.
The embarrassment in my thoughts extended suddenly to my body, and I
asked myself the next minute if Sally contrasted my heavy silence with
the blithe self-confidence and the sportive pleasantries of Ned
Marshall? Was she beginning already, unconsciously to her own heart,
perhaps, to question if the passion I had given her would suffice to
cover in her life the absence of the unspoken harmony in outward things?
With the question there rose before me the figure of George Bolingbroke,
as he bent over and laid the blossom of sweet alyssum beside her plate;
and, as at the instant in which I had watched him, I felt again the
physical soreness which had become a part of my furious desire to make
good my stand.

When Bonny and Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the
dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and
pensive, for a moment, while she stroked my arm.

"You look tired, Ben. If you only wouldn't work so hard."

"I must work. It's the only thing I'm good for."

"But I see so little of you and--and I get so lonely."

"When I've won out, I'll stop, and then you shall see me every living
minute of the day, if you choose."

"That's so far off, and it's now I want you. I'd like you to take me
away, Ben--to take me somewhere just as you did when we were married."

Her face was very soft in the firelight, and stooping, I kissed her
cheek as she looked up at me, with a grave, almost pensive smile on her
lips.

"I wish I could, sweetheart, but I'm needed here so badly that