t
of these was a girl, and the man who followed behind was evidently the
servant of an exalted house, for he wore a livery of green and gold.

Gleb's ass had come cantering down at his master's whistle and now stood
broadside-on in the middle of the road, blocking the way. The girl
pulled up her horse with a jerk and, half-turning her head to her
attendant, she called. The man rode forward.

"Get your donkey out of the way, fool," he boomed in a deep-chested
roar.

He was a big man, broad-shouldered and stout. Like most Russian domestic
servants, his face was clean-shaven, but Malcolm, watching the scene
idly, observed only this about him--that he had a crooked nose and that
his hair was a fiery red.

"Gently, gently." It was the girl who spoke and she addressed her
restive horse in English.

As for Gleb, the peasant, he stood, his hands clasped before him, his
head humbly hung, incapable of movement, and with a laugh Malcolm jumped
down from the bank, seized the donkey by his bridle and drew him
somewhat reluctantly to the side of the road. The girl's horse had been
curveting and prancing nervously, so that it brought her to within a
few paces of Malcolm, and he looked up, wondering what rich man's
daughter was this who spoke in English to her horse ... only once before
had he seen her in the light of day.

The face was not pale, yet the colour that was in her cheeks so
delicately toned with the ivory-white of forehead and neck that she
looked pale. The eyes, set wide apart, were so deep a grey that in
contrast with the creamy pallor of brow they appeared black.

A firm, red mouth he noticed; thin pencilling of eyebrows, a tangle of
dark brown hair; but neither sight of her nor sound of her tired
drawling voice, gave her such permanence in his mind as the indefinite
sense of womanliness that clothed her like an aurora.

He responded wonderfully to some mysterious call she made upon the man
in him. He felt that his senses played no part in shaping his view. If
he had met her in the dark, and had neither seen nor heard; if she had
been a bare-legged peasant girl on her way to the fields; if he had met
her anywhere, anyhow--she would have been divine.

She, for her part, saw a tall young man, mahogany faced, leanly made, in
old shooting-jacket and battered Stetson hat. She saw a good forehead
and an unruly mop of hair, and beneath two eyes, now awe-stricken by
her femininity (this she might have guessed) rather