g as a man's finger got on the Black
Abbot's right knee. You know--" I stopped suddenly. Cynthia's eyes were
resting on me, and there was something in their grey depths that made me
stop.

But Woodford went on. "My great aunt," he said, "was thrown day before
yesterday, but she did not take to her bed over it. How is your
brother?"

"Able to take care of himself," I said.

"Perhaps," he responded slowly, "to take care of himself." And he
glanced suggestively at Cynthia.

The innuendo was intolerable. I gaped at the slim, brown-haired girl.
Surely she would resent this. Traitor if she pleased, she was still a
woman. But she only looked up wistfully into Woodford's face and smiled
as artless, winning, merry a smile as ever was born on a woman's mouth.

In that instant the picture of Ward came up before me. His pale face
with its black hair framed in pillows; his hand, always so suggestive of
unlimited resource, lying on the white coverlid, so helpless that old
Liza moved it in her great black palm as though it were a little
child's; and across on the mantle shelf, where he could see it when his
eyes were open, was that old picture of Cynthia with the funny little
curls.

I felt a great flood rising up from the springs of life, a hot,
rebellious flood of tears. A moment I held them back at the gateway of
the eyepits, then they gushed through, and I struck the False Prophet
over his iron grey withers, and we passed in a gallop.

CHAPTER III

THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION

El Mahdi wanted to run, and I let him go. The swing of the horse and the
rush of fresh, cool air was good. Nothing in all the world could have
helped me so well. The tears were mastered, but I had a sense of
tremendous loss. I had jousted with the first windmill, riding up out of
youth's golden country, and I had lost one of the splendid illusions of
that enchanted land. I was cruelly hurt. How cruelly, any man will know
when he recalls his first jamming against the granite door-posts of the
world.

Of love and all its mysterious business, I knew nothing. But of good
faith and fair dealing I had a child's conception, the terrible justness
of which is but dimly understood. The new point of view was ugly and
painful. From the time when I toddled about in little dresses and Ward
carried me on his shoulder in among the cattle or hoisted me up on the
broad horn of his saddle, I had looked upon him as a big, considerate
Providence. I did not u