ck next morning he was within a mile or two of Grampierre's
place. The river was dazzling in the morning sunlight, the air like
wine.

The poplar trees had put on their gorgeous autumn dress of saffron and
scarlet, which showed like names against the chocolate colored hills.
Suddenly in a grassy ravine on his right, Ambrose saw the "yellow"
horse feeding.

His heart set up a furious beating. No power on earth could have
prevented him from landing, though common sense told him clearly no
good could come of it. That "perhaps" drew him ashore, that hope
against hope.

After a short search he found her sleeping under a poplar-tree in a
hollow of the bank that was hidden from the river.

She wore her khaki riding-habit, as usual; her head was couched in the
crook of her arm, and in the other hand she held her Stetson hat by its
strap. Ambrose brooded over her wistfully.

Her face was paler and thinner; evidently she herself had not been
having too easy a time these two months past.

These blemishes on her beauty made her seem infinitely more beautiful
and dearer to him. And all relaxed and disarmed in sleep as she was,
it seemed so easy a thing to gather her up in his arms and make her
forget what divided them.

Ambrose's dim thought was: "If somehow I could only send her real self
a message while her head-strong, unreasonable self is asleep, maybe
she'd confess the truth when she woke."

While he was hungrily gazing at her her eyelids fluttered. He moved
back to a more respectful distance. She awoke without alarm. For an
instant she lay looking at him as calmly as a babe in its crib.

Then in a flash recollection returned, and she sprang to a sitting
position, both hands, womanlike, flying to her hair. She eyed him with
a certain discomposure. It was as if she felt that she ought to be
furiously angry, and was somewhat dismayed because it did not come.

"What do you want?" she asked coldly.

In her cold eye Ambrose was conscious of a wall between them more
impenetrable than granite. His heart gave up hope. "Nothing," he said
sullenly.

"It's not exactly agreeable," she said, frowning, "to find oneself
spied upon."

Ambrose started and frowned. This construction of his act had not
occurred to him. "I saw Ginger from the river," he said indignantly.
"I landed to find you."

"What did you want?" she asked coolly.

"I don't know," said Ambrose.

There was a silence between them. Her cold loo