en pages.

She read with great deliberation, a second and then a third time, a hymn
to love, boyishly crude, but charged to the full with youth and
longing; no better and no worse, perhaps, than the average effusion of
twenty-six in love, not with woman but with love; authentic, and for
that reason sacred; overwrought, as became the heedless passion which
inspired it; self-revealing, but of sex and temper rather than of mind.
A few years back it would have shocked her; now, it made her think.

She replaced the flower, closed the book and thrust it under her pillow.
Far into the night she sat there, her arms clasped about her knees, her
eyes luminous but unseeing. Finally the night chill aroused her and she
slipped into bed.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PASSING OF A CLOUD

But that was a week ago and now she was riding homeward with him in the
moonlight. She had the notebook in the inside pocket of her riding
jacket, having decided to return it to him in person, and this had been
her first opportunity, he having been away for the whole of the previous
week on some range matter requiring his personal attention.

He had evidently dropped the book from his shirt pocket during his
struggle with the refractory gate, and on his return had interrogated
everyone on the ranch about it except the actual finder, that worthy
being absent at the time of his return on some errand for Miss Carter.
He was very anxious for its recovery for more reasons than one. It
contained some valuable memoranda about his range work; and then, again,
he had private reasons why none of the men should chance to fall afoul
of his metrical effusion. He was familiar with the coarse badinage of
the camp, a humor that respects no personage, however high his official
position, and the possibilities worried him.

He felt a great chagrin that he had as yet not been able to locate
Matlock. In his supersensitiveness he was obsessed with an entirely
unfounded impression that he was losing prestige among his men because
of the unavoidable delay. If they were to learn that he had been
farther guilty of the inexcusable weakness of writing verse of that
sentimental character, his cup of bitterness would be running over!

Imagine his unbounded relief when she handed it to him with the simple
remark: "I have something here belonging to you, I think." But almost
instantly he was filled with consternation. Had she by any miserable
chance read that verse! Intuitivel