tly dropped the
blanket and stole back to his place ready to turn at the first foot
fall and lift a silencing hand.

It was one of the beautiful moments that had come to him in his wooing.
He sat in still reverie, feeling the dear responsibilities of his
ownership. That she might sleep, sweet and soft, he would work as no
man ever worked before. To guard, to comfort, to protect her--that
would be his life. He turned and looked at her, his sensitive face
softening like a woman's watching the sleep of her child. Susan, all
unconscious, with her rich young body showing in faint curves under the
defining blanket, and her hair lying loose among the roots of the
lupine bush, was so devoid of that imperious quality that marked her
when awake, was so completely a tender feminine thing, with peaceful
eyelids and innocent lips, that it seemed a desecration to look upon
her in such a moment of abandonment. Love might transform her into
this--in her waking hours when her body and heart had yielded
themselves to their master.

David turned away. The sacred thought that some day he would be the
owner of this complex creation of flesh and spirit, so rich, so fine,
with depths unknown to his groping intelligence, made a rush of
supplication, a prayer to be worthy, rise in his heart. He looked at
the sunset through half-shut eyes, sending his desire up to that
unknown God, who, in these wild solitudes, seemed leaning down to
listen:

"Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."

The sun, falling to the horizon like a spinning copper disk, was as a
sign of promise and help. The beauty of the hour stretched into the
future. His glance, shifting to the distance, saw the scattered dots
of the disappearing buffalo, the shadows sloping across the sand hills,
and the long expanse of lupines blotting into a thick foam of lilac
blue.

Susan stirred, and he woke from his musings with a start. She sat up,
the blanket falling from her shoulders, and looking at him with
sleep-filled eyes, smiled the sweet, meaningless smile of a
half-awakened child. Her consciousness had not yet fully returned, and
her glance, curiously clear and liquid, rested on his without
intelligence. The woman in her was never more apparent, her seduction
never more potent. Her will dormant, her bounding energies at low ebb,
she looked a thing to nestle, soft and yielding, against a man's heart.

"Have I slept long?" she said stretchin