never to be more to each other? Oh, it is good just to love, I know--you have

made me madly happy; but one does get so hungry at times for something more! I
want more and more of you, Chris. I want all of you. I want all our days to be

together. I want all the companionship" target="_blank" title="n.伴侣关系；友谊">companionship, the comradeship, which cannot be ours
now, and which will be ours when we are married--" She caught her breath

quickly. "But we are never to be married. I forgot. And you must tell me why."
The man raised his head and looked her in the eyes. It was a way he had with

whomever he talked, of looking them in the eyes.
"I have considered you, Lute," he began doggedly. "I did consider you at the

very first. I should never have gone on with it. I should have gone away. I
knew it. And I considered you in the light of that knowledge, and yet . . . I

did not go away. My God! what was I to do? I loved you. I could not go away. I
could not help it. I stayed. I resolved" target="_blank" title="a.决心的；坚定的">resolved, but I broke my resolves. I was like a

drunkard. I was drunk of you. I was weak, I know. I failed. I could not go
away. I tried. I went away--you will remember, though you did not know why.

You know now. I went away, but I could not remain away. Knowing that we could
never marry, I came back to you. I am here, now, with you. Send me away, Lute.

I have not the strength to go myself."
"But why should you go away?" she asked. "Besides, I must know why, before I

can send you away."
"Don't ask me."

"Tell me," she said, her voice tenderly imperative.
"Don't, Lute; don't force me," the man pleaded, and there was appeal in his

eyes and voice.
"But you must tell me," she insisted. "It is justice you owe me."

The man wavered. "If I do . . ." he began. Then he ended with determination,
"I should never be able to forgive myself. No, I cannot tell you. Don't try to

compel me, Lute. You would be as sorry as I."
"If there is anything . . . if then are, obstacles . . . if this mystery does

really prevent . . . " She was speaking slowly, with long pauses, seeking the
more delicate ways of speech for the framing of her thought. "Chris, I do love

you. I love you as deeply as it is possible for any woman to love, I am sure.
If you were to say to me now 'Come,' I would go with you. I would follow

wherever you led. I would be your page, as in the days of old when ladies went
with their knights to far lands. You are my knight, Chris, and you can do no

wrong. Your will is my wish. I was once afraid of the censure of the world.
Now that you have come into my life I am no longer afraid. I would laugh at

the world and its censure for your sake--for my sake too. I would laugh, for I
should have you, and you are more to me than the good will and approval of the

world. If you say 'Come,' I will--"
"Don't! Don't!" he cried. "It is impossible! Marriage or not, I cannot even

say 'Come.' I dare not. I'll show you. I'll tell you."
He sat up beside her, the action stamped with resolve. He took her hand in his

and held it closely. His lips moved to the verge of speech. The mystery
trembled for utterance. The air was palpitant with its presence. As if it were

an irrevocable decree, the girl steeled herself to hear. But the man paused,
gazing straight out before him. She felt his hand relax in hers, and she

pressed it sympathetically, encouragingly. But she felt the rigidity going out
of his tensed body, and she knew that spirit and flesh were relaxing together.

His resolution was ebbing. He would not speak--she knew it; and she knew,
likewise, with the sureness of faith, that it was because he could not.

She gazed despairingly before her, a numb feeling at her heart, as though hope
and happiness had died. She watched the sun flickering down through the

warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a mechanical, absent way. She looked
at the scene as from a long way off, without interest, herself an alien, no

longer an intimate part of the earth and trees and flowers she loved so well.
So far removed did she seem, that she was aware of a curiosity, strangely

impersonal, in what lay around her. Through a near vista she looked at a
buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes encountered it for the first

time. Her eyes paused and dwelt upon a yellow cluster of Diogenes' lanterns
that grew on the edge of an open space. It was the way of flowers always to

give her quick pleasure-thrills, but no thrill was hers now. She pondered the
flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug,

might ponder some whim-flower that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the
voice of the stream--a hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and

mumbling his somnolent fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was
its wont; she knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the

deep canyon-bottom, that and nothing more.
Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes' lanterns into the open space.

Knee-deep in the wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses, chestnut-sorrels
the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm and golden in the sunshine, their

spring-coats a sheen of high-lights shot through with color-flashes that
glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost with a shock, that one of

them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her girlhood and womanhood, on whose
neck she had sobbed her sorrows and sung her joys. A moistness welled into her

eyes at the sight, and she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick
with passion and sorrow, to be part of the world again.

The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing entirely, and with a groan
dropped his head on her knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips softly

and lingeringly to his hair.
"Come, let us go," she said, almost in a whisper.

She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened her lips as she rose. His
face was white to ghastliness, so shaken was he by the struggle through which

he had passed. They did not look at each other, but walked directly to the
horses. She leaned against Dolly's neck while he tightened the girths. Then

she gathered the reins in her hand and waited. He looked at her as he bent
down, an appeal for forgiveness in his eyes; and in that moment her own eyes

answered. Her foot rested in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the
saddle. Without speaking, without further looking at each other, they turned

the horses' heads and took the narrow trail that wound down through the sombre
redwood aisles and across the open glades to the pasture-lands below. The

trail became a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined
with a hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California

hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran along the
bottom of the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man dismounted and

began taking down the bars.
"No--wait!" she cried, before he had touched the two lower bars.

She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, and then the animal lifted
over the bars in a clean little jump. The man's eyes sparkled, and he clapped

his hands.
"You beauty! you beauty!" the girl cried, leaning forward impulsively in the

saddle and pressing her cheek to the mare's neck where it burned flame-color
in the sun.

"Let's trade horses for the ride in," she suggested, when he had led his horse
through and finished putting up the bars. "You've never sufficiently

appreciated Dolly."
"No, no," he protested.

"You think she is too old, too sedate," Lute insisted. "She's only sixteen,
and she can outrun nine colts out of ten. Only she never cuts up. She's too

steady, and you don't approve of her--no, don't deny it, sir. I know. And I
know also that she can outrun your vaunted Washoe Ban. There! I challenge you!

And furthermore, you may ride her yourself. You know what Ban can do; so you
must ride Dolly and see for yourself what she can do."

They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the horses, glad of the diversion
and making the most of it.

"I'm glad I was born in California," Lute remarked, as she swung astride of
Ban. "It's an outrage both to horse and woman to ride in a sidesaddle."

"You look like a young Amazon," the man said approvingly, his eyes passing
tenderly over the girl as she swung the horse around.

"Are you ready?" she asked.
"All ready!"

"To the old mill," she called, as the horses sprang forward. "That's less than
a mile."

"To a finish?" he demanded.
She nodded, and the horses, feeling the urge of the reins, caught the spirit

of the race. The dust rose in clouds behind as they tore along the level road.
They swung around the bend, horses and riders tilted at sharp angles to the