rode
fast through the villages."

Perhaps that was the most puzzling and thought-provoking thing she had
yet said to Venters. He pondered, more curious the more he learned, but
he curbed his inquisitive desires, for he saw her shrinking on the
verge of that shame, the causing of which had occasioned him such
self-reproach. He would ask no more. Still he had to think, and he
found it difficult to think clearly. This sad-eyed girl was so utterly
different from what it would have been reason to believe such a
remarkable life would have made her. On this day he had found her simple
and frank, as natural as any girl he had ever known. About her there was
something sweet. Her voice was low and well modulated. He could not look
into her face, meet her steady, unabashed, yet wistful eyes, and think
of her as the woman she had confessed herself. Oldring's Masked Rider
sat before him, a girl dressed as a man. She had been made to ride at
the head of infamous forays and drives. She had been imprisoned for many
months of her life in an obscure cabin. At times the most vicious of men
had been her companions; and the vilest of women, if they had not been
permitted to approach her, had, at least, cast their shadows over her.
But--but in spite of all this--there thundered at Venters some truth
that lifted its voice higher than the clamoring facts of dishonor,
some truth that was the very life of her beautiful eyes; and it was
innocence.

In the days that followed, Venters balanced perpetually in mind this
haunting conception of innocence over against the cold and sickening
fact of an unintentional yet actual gift. How could it be possible for
the two things to be true? He believed the latter to be true, and he
would not relinquish his conviction of the former; and these conflicting
thoughts augmented the mystery that appeared to be a part of Bess. In
those ensuing days, however, it became clear as clearest light that
Bess was rapidly regaining strength; that, unless reminded of her long
association with Oldring, she seemed to have forgotten it; that, like an
Indian who lives solely from moment to moment, she was utterly absorbed
in the present.

Day by day Venters watched the white of her face slowly change to brown,
and the wasted cheeks fill out by imperceptible degrees. There came a
time when he could just trace the line of demarcation between the part
of her face once hidden by a mask and that left exposed to wind and sun.
When