was a
complete revelation, an embodiment of those dreams of impossible
loveliness that linger by a young man's pillow on midsummer nights;
yet, because it held something more than the attraction of health
and youth and shapeliness, it troubled him, and in its presence he
felt as the Goths before the white marbles in the Roman Capitol, not
knowing whether they were men or gods. At times he felt like
uncovering his head before it, again the fury seized him to break
and despoil, to find the clay in this spirit-thing and stamp upon
it. Away from her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and take
and hold; it maddened him that this woman whom he could break in his
hands should be so much stronger than he. But near her, he never
questioned this strength; he admitted its potentiality as he
admitted the miracles of the Bible; it enervated and conquered him.
To-night, when he rode so close to her that he could have touched
her, he knew that he might as well reach out his hand to take a
star.

Margaret stirred uneasily under his gaze and turned questioningly in
her saddle.

"This wind puts me a little out of breath when we ride fast," she
said.

Eric turned his eyes away.

"I want to ask you if I go to New York to work, if I maybe hear
music like you sang last night? I been a purty good hand to work,"
he asked, timidly.

Margaret looked at him with surprise, and then, as she studied the
outline of his face, pityingly.

"Well, you might--but you'd lose a good deal else. I shouldn't like
you to go to New York--and be poor, you'd be out of atmosphere, some
way," she said, slowly. Inwardly she was thinking: "There he would
be altogether sordid, impossible--a machine who would carry one's
trunks upstairs, perhaps. Here he is every inch a man, rather
picturesque; why is it?" "No," she added aloud, "I shouldn't like
that."

"Then I not go," said Eric, decidedly.

Margaret turned her face to hide a smile. She was a trifle amused
and a trifle annoyed. Suddenly she spoke again.

"But I'll tell you what I do want you to do, Eric. I want you to
dance with us to-morrow night and teach me some of the Norwegian
dances; they say you know them all. Won't you?"

Eric straightened himself in his saddle and his eyes flashed as they
had done in the Lone Star schoolhouse when he broke his violin
across his knee.

"Yes, I will," he said, quietly, and he believed that he delivered
his soul to hell as he said it.

They had reached