ds with fingers apart, as
if to let something run free from them into the air, and the flame of
appeal that had been in her eyes broke into many lights that seemed to
scatter into space, yet ready to return at her command. She glanced at
the clock and rose, almost abruptly.

"I was very strenuous riding my hobby against yours, wasn't I?" she
exclaimed in a flutter of distraction that made it easy for him to
descend from his own steed. "I stated a feeling. I made a guess, a
threat about your winning--and all in the air. That's a woman's
privilege; one men grant, isn't it?"

"We enjoy doing so," he replied, all urbanity.

"Thank you!" she said simply. "I must be at home in time for the
children's lesson on Sunday. My sleeper is engaged, and if I am not to
miss the train I must go immediately."

With an undeniable shock of regret he realized that the interview was
over. Really, he had had a very good time; not only that, but--.

"Will it be ten years before we meet again?" he asked.

"Perhaps, unless you change the rules about officers dossing the
frontier to take tea," she replied.

"Even if I did, the vice-chief of staff might hardly go."

"Then perhaps you must wait," she warned him, "until the teachers of
peace have done away with all frontiers."

"Or, if there were war, I should come!" he answered in kind. He half
wished that this might start another argument and she would miss her
train. But she made no reply. "And you may come to the Gray capital
again. You are not through travelling!" he added.

This aroused her afresh; the flame was back in her eyes.

"Yes. I have all the memories of my journeys to enjoy, all their lessons
to study," she said. "There is the big world, and you want to have had
the breath of all its climates in your lungs, the visions of all its
peoples yours. Then the other thing is three acres and a cow. If you
could only have the solidarity of the Japanese, their public spirit,
with the old Chinese love of family and peace, and a cathedral near-by
on a hill! Patriotism? Why, it is in the soil of your three acres. I
love to feel the warm, rich earth of our own garden in my hands!
Hereafter I shall be a stay-at-home; and if my children win," she held
out her hand in parting with the same frank, earnest grip of her
greeting, "why, you will find that tea is, as usual, at four-thirty."

He had found the women of his high official world--a narrower world than
he realized--much alike. Stri