and's heart for a few golden
hours, so thoroughly permeating every fibre of her emotional being that
when sorrow came afterward it could not entirely drive out the
whispering gladness.

Never had the forest land seemed so big, so vast and still as during
the slow days which followed. She went to it for the comfort she could
not bring herself to ask of her mother just yet, and it mothered her,
crooned and whispered and sang to her. Through the dew filled mornings
she wandered silently; rarely did she return to the house until the sun
was low in the west. Never had this world she loved seemed so vitally
close to her, so big in a new sense, so eloquently an expression of the
divine eternal. Her heart swelled and the talk of the pine tops
entered it.

They were sad, glad days. Gladness sang in her heart when in the
sun-flooded mornings she rode out alone, and perhaps her devious way
brought her to the spot where Red Reckless had swept her up into his
arms for the first time, when his kiss had brought love into full
blossom in her breast. Sadness brought its shadow and listlessness
when day after day passed and she did not see him again, when the eager
hope of the morning that he too would ride to that spot to meet her
died down in the afternoon's invariable disappointment. Gladness when
she thought of him, just of him; sadness when she thought of her
father's stern face.

Red Reckless had made no attempt to see her, or to communicate with
her. Even while she sought to find excuses for him, that hurt her more
than her loyalty would let her whisper to herself. He would come soon.
He would know where to find her, know that her woman's heart was taking
her to the spot where that heart had really become a woman's. He was
thinking of her now as she thought of him. Her heart heard his heart
talking to it across the forests and streams.

A woman's heart trusted him, but a maiden's pride permitted no question
when Garth rode over as he did twice during the following week. When
Garth remarked casually that his cousin was the same old chap he'd
always been, and that he seemed to have nothing in his rollicking brain
more serious than the breaking of a wild devil of a colt and a horse
race which he had set his heart upon, Wanda bent her head a little over
her book and gave no other sign of having heard the statement elicited
by her mother's question. But the news hurt, too, just a little.
There was a quick sting that c