er.

She laughed a little, scornfully. "Very well, I'll give you one more
chance. I like you too well to drop you entirely." (What an air of
autocracy she took, to be sure!) "You mustn't speak of that again. And
you must forget it entirely." She lowered at him, a delicious picture
of wrath.

They saddled the horses and took their way homeward in silence. The
tenderness put out its flower head from the inner sanctuary. Apparently
the coast was clear. It ventured a little further. The evening was very
shadowy and sweet and musical with birds. The tenderness boldly invaded
Bennington's eyes, and spoke, oh, so timidly, from his lips.

"I will do just as you say," it hesitated, "and I'll be very, very
good indeed. But am I to have no hope at all?"

"Why can't you keep off that standpoint entirely?"

"Just that one question; then I will."

"Well," grudgingly, "I suppose nothing on earth could keep the average
mortal from hoping; but I can't answer that there is any ground for
it."

"When can I speak of it again?"

"I don't know--after the Pioneer's Picnic."

"That is when you cease to be a mystery, isn't it?"

She sighed. "That is when I become a greater mystery--even to myself, I
fear," she added in a murmur too low for him to catch.

They rode on in silence for a little space more. The night shadows were
flowing down between the trees like vapour. The girl of her own accord
returned to the subject.

"You are greatly to be envied," she said a little sadly, "for you are
really young. I am old, oh, very, very old! You have trust and
confidence. I have not. I can sympathize; I can understand. But that
is all. There is something within me that binds all my emotions so fast
that I can not give way to them. I want to. I wish I could. But it is
getting harder and harder for me to think of absolutely trusting, in
the sense of giving out the self that is my own. Ah, but you are to be
envied! You have saved up and accumulated the beautiful in your nature.
I have wasted mine, and now I sit by the roadside and cry for it. My
only hope and prayer is that a higher and better something will be
given me in place of the wasted, and yet I have no right to expect it.
Silly, isn't it?" she concluded bitterly.

Bennington made no reply.

They drew near the gulch, and could hear the mellow sound of bells as
the town herd defiled slowly down it toward town.

"We part here," the young man broke the long silence. "When do I see
y