miled in clear self-derision over her contemplated project of saving
him from Paula. He didn't need saving from anybody. He was one of those
spirits that couldn't be tied. Not even his own best effort of submission
could avail to keep the harness on his back.

It was most curious how comfortable she had been with him. During the
miserable month she had spent at home before she went to Wyoming with the
Corbetts, she had dreaded a second encounter with March and had
consciously avoided one. To meet and be introduced as the strangers they
were supposed by the rest of the family to be, to elaborate the pretense
that this was what they were--they who had shared those flaming moments
while Paula sang!--would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else,
any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the
privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen
ways, all equally distressing.

She had not made good her resolution to quit thinking about him. She was
not able and did not even attempt to dismiss her adventure with him as a
mere regrettable folly to be forgotten as soon as possible. It had often
come back to her during sleepless hours of the long nights and had always
been made welcome. She didn't wish it defaced as she had felt it
necessarily must be by the painful anti-climax of a second meeting.

The impulse upon which she had taken him out of old Nat's hands was
perhaps a little surprising now she looked back on it, but it had not
astonished her at the time. Of course, there, there was something
concretely to be done, an injustice to be averted from a possibly
innocent head. She doubted though if it had been pure altruism.

Whatever its nature, the result of it had been altogether happy. She
_was_ glad she had come down to see him. There need be no misgiving now
about the quality of their future encounters, were there to be any such.
They were on solid ground with each other.

How had that been brought about? How had they managed to talk to each
other for anyway fifteen or twenty minutes without either a reference to
their adventure or a palpable avoidance of it? It wasn't her doing. From
the moment when she got to the end of the lines she had rehearsed coming
down the stairs, the lead had been in his hands. Indeed, to the latter
part of the talk, what she had contributed was no more than a question or
two so flagrantly personal that they reminded her in review of some