m the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she painted
pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt sienna; and
her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.

He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
beauty he had known--might still know if he chose; for a man who can pay
for his evening clothes need never deny himself the society he was bred
to.

She certainly did resemble that girl--she had the same bluish violet
eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of
carriage, a trifle too boyish at times--the same firmly rounded, yet
slender, figure.

"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping
squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those
girls--before Copper blew up."

Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like
the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints
portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I
have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes
of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look
at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the
hall----"

The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The
horse was coming fast--almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on
the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the
thicket's edge.

What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a
big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at
him--a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened
hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled,
jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless,
hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of
a bush covered with white flowers.

Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the
grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock,
brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in
halting, broken whispers.

When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl
stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the
cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever
looked upon.

"