ure, and she rode easily, perched on
her small, old-fashioned side-saddle, swaying with lithe movement to the
motion of her horse. She wore no wrap, only a soft silk kerchief knotted
about her neck, the fluttering ends of which caressed her chin.

Her cheeks became rosy with the exercise, and her gray eyes, under the
green pines and among the dense laurel thickets, took on a warm,
luminous green tint like the hue of her dress. David at last found it
difficult to keep his eyes from her,--this veritable flower of the
wilderness,--and all this time no word had been spoken between them. How
impersonal and far away from him she seemed! While he was filled with
interest in her and eager to learn the secret springs of her life, she
was riding on and on, swaying to her horse as a flower on its slender
stem sways in a breeze, as undisturbed by him as if she were not a human
breathing girl, subject to man's dominating power.

Was she, then, so utterly untouched by his masculine presence? he
wondered. If he did not speak first, would she keep silent forever?
Should he wait and see? Should he will her to speak and of herself
unfold to him?

Suddenly she turned and looked clearly and pleasantly in his eyes.
"We'll be on a straight road for a piece after this hill; shall we hurry
a little then?"

"Certainly, if you think best. You set the pace, and I'll follow." Again
silence fell.

"Do you feel in a hurry?" he asked at length.

"I would like to get there soon. We can't tell what might be." She
pressed her hand an instant to her throat and drew in her breath as if
something hurt her.

"What is it?" he asked, drawing his horse nearer.

"Nothing. Only I wish we were there now."

"You are suffering in anticipation, and it isn't necessary. Better not,
indeed. Think of something else."

"Yes, suh." The two little words sounded humbly submissive. He had never
been so baffled in an endeavor to bring another soul into a mood
responsive to his own. This gentle acquiescence was not what he wished,
but that she should reveal herself and betray to him even a hint--a
gleam--of the deep undercurrent of her life.

Suddenly they emerged on the crest of a narrow ridge from which they
could see off over range after range of mountain peaks on one side,
growing dimmer, bluer, and more evanescent until lost in a heavenly
distance, and on the other side a valley dropping down and down into a
deep and purple gloom richly wooded and dense, sur