nce. Alternate warmth and coolness swam in the air and
touched the riders' faces.

At a bend in the road the ponies crowded together. Collie's hand
accidentally brushed against the girl's and she drew away. He glanced
up quickly. She was gazing straight ahead at the distant peaks. He felt
strangely pleased that she had drawn away from him when his hand touched
hers. Some instinct told him that their old friendship had given place
to something else--something as yet too vague to describe. She was not
angry with him, he knew. Her face was troubled. He gazed at her as they
rode and his heart yearned for her tenderly. Life had suddenly assumed a
tensity that silenced them. The little lizards of the stones scurried
away from either side of the road. One after another, with sprightly
steps, a covey of mountain quail crossed the road before them, leaving
little starlike tracks in the dust. Though homeward bound the ponies
plodded with lowered heads. Moonstone Canon, always wonderful in its
wild, rugged beauty, seemed as a place of dreams, only real as it echoed
the tread of the ponies. The canon stream chattered, murmured, quarreled
round a rock-strewn bend, laughed at itself, and passed, singing a
cool-voiced melody.

They rode through a vale of enchantment, only known to Youth and Love.
Her gray eyes were misty and troubled. His eyes were heavy with
unuttered longing. His heart pounded until it almost choked him. He bit
his lips that he might keep silent.

The glint of the slanting sunlight on her hair, the turn of her wrist as
she held the reins, her apparent unconsciousness of all outward things
enthralled him. A spell hung round him like a mist, blinding and
baffling all clearer thought. And because Louise knew his heart, knew
that his homage was not of books, but of his very self, she lingered in
the dream whose thread she might have snapped with a word, a gesture.

Generously the girl blamed herself that she had been the one to cause
him sorrow. She could not give herself to him, be his wife as she knew
he wished her to be. Yet she liked him more than she cared to admit. He
had fought for her once and taken his punishment with a grin. She felt
joy in his homage, and yet she felt humility. In what way, she asked
herself, was she better, cleaner of heart, kinder or cleverer than
Collie? Why should people make distinctions as to birth, or breeding, or
wealth, when character and physical excellence meant so much more?