nted quickness. Stewart seemed oblivious to her presence.
His eyes were closed. His dark face softened, lost its hardness and
fierceness and sadness, and for an instant became beautiful.

Madeline instantly divined what his action meant. He was leaving the
ranch; this was his good-by to his horse. How strange, sad, fine was
this love between man and beast! A dimness confused Madeline's eyes;
she hurriedly brushed it away, and it came back wet and blurring. She
averted her face, ashamed of the tears Stewart might see. She was sorry
for him. He was going away, and this time, judging from the nature of
his farewell to his horse, it was to be forever. Like a stab from a
cold blade a pain shot through Madeline's heart. The wonder of it, the
incomprehensibility of it, the utter newness and strangeness of this
sharp pain that now left behind a dull pang, made her forget Stewart,
her surroundings, everything except to search her heart. Maybe here was
the secret that had eluded her. She trembled on the brink of something
unknown. In some strange way the emotion brought back her girlhood.
Her mind revolved swift queries and replies; she was living, feeling,
learning; happiness mocked at her from behind a barred door, and the
bar of that door seemed to be an inexplicable pain. Then like lightning
strokes shot the questions: Why should pain hide her happiness? What
was her happiness? What relation had it to this man? Why should she feel
strangely about his departure? And the voices within her were silenced,
stunned, unanswered.

"I want to talk to you," said Stewart.

Madeline started, turned to him, and now she saw the earlier Stewart,
the man who reminded her of their first meeting at El Cajon, of that
memorable meeting at Chiricahua.

"I want to ask you something," he went on. "I've been wanting to know
something. That's why I've hung on here. You never spoke to me, never
noticed me, never gave me a chance to ask you. But now I'm going
over--over the border. And I want to know. Why did you refuse to listen
to me?"

At his last words that hot shame, tenfold more stifling than when it had
before humiliated Madeline, rushed over her, sending the scarlet in a
wave to her temples. It seemed that his words made her realize she was
actually face to face with him, that somehow a shame she would rather
have died than revealed was being liberated. Biting her lips to hold
back speech, she jerked on Majesty's bridle, struck him with he