ince. Julia's heart swelled with pride as her own brave
colt came down the stretch towards them, gradually increasing his
speed. He flashed past them with the lithe movements of one of the
feline tribe, and as his nose was set to the next half mile he began to
let himself out. His rider did not carry a whip. A slow slackening of
the tightly-held reins was all that was necessary for quicker action.
The Prince was born to run; to be held back was galling and unnatural.
Rapidly and more rapidly his feet rose and fell, his movements as
regular as the mechanism of a clock. Faster and faster he went, each
prodigious leap increasing his momentum. When he swung into the home
stretch the second time he was coming beautifully, and with a degree of
swiftness which dumfounded both the girl and the man. Like an autumn
leaf torn from a tree and whirled away on a cyclone, The Prince went by
his group of friends.

"Splendid!" muttered John Glenning, intense pleasure showing on his
face.

The girl turned to him with eyes which almost hurt.

"Can Marston's entries _possibly_ beat him?" she implored, impetuously
raising her hand to his arm, but refraining from laying it there.

"Nothing that runs on four feet can beat him!" declared John,
enthusiastically. "And I, like you, have seen horses run ever since I
was big enough to know what a horse was. Ah! he is a noble animal--and
how gracefully he runs! No wonder you love him, and I congratulate you
on possessing him!"

Her lips parted for a quick reply, but she stopped and gazed down the
track instead, where The Prince and his rider had at last come to a
halt. She had started to say what was in her heart, to tell him that he
had saved the colt for her twice, and that she would never forget it.
Then that awful barrier had thrust itself before her eyes; that strange
barrier of his terrible silence. She could not be free with him; she
could not be as she was in the first days when they had met. Then she
could say all she wished to say, but that was before she had awakened;
before new thoughts and feelings and vague, unguessed desires had
blossomed in her soul, at times almost drugging her with their subtle
perfume. It was so different now. The world had changed. She had burst
the chrysalis of girlhood, and her woman's nature was surging up in her,
dominant, primordial, searching, calling, demanding its own! It gave her
pain. She knew that with that hidden past cleared away, and the love