uld
quit now, I'd despise myself for ever having loved you."

Wayland could not answer. His eyes had filled. He rode with his hand
on the pommel of the saddle. Her words had fallen like whiplashes. It
was true. You could not cut out and disconnect with life. He had
dreamed of this last ride as a sort of mid-heaven ecstasy; and behold,
instead of love's dream, the lifting kick to a limp spine. If only
one's friends would oftener give us that lifting kick instead of the
softening sympathy! If only they would brace our back bone instead of
our wish bone!

Then, she turned to him with a sudden tenderness: "What a beast I am to
speak so to you when you've just had the blow of public dismissal on
top of five years' continuous grilling," and he saw that the flame in
her cheeks, in her eyes, was not anger but a gust of passionate love.

"I can't thank you Eleanor," he said. "This is beyond thanks."

"And your old editor man was so funny about it," she went on. "You
know Dick, I think he had really come round to the hotel to have a
consolation drink with you; and he almost let it out; but just at the
last moment he changed the word and said he'd come 'to shake' with you
on being dismissed together."

"When do you leave?" asked Wayland dully.

"I don't leave! I haven't the slightest intention of ever leaving this
Valley! Why, Dick, would you have me exchange this splendid big free
new life where men and women do things, for a parish existence--working
slippers for a curate and talking dress, Dick--dress like the Colonel's
wife, and chronicling what Shakespeare calls 'small beer'? I don't
intend ever to leave the Valley! Tennyson sung of 'the federation of
the world,' Dick! You and I are seeing it in the making! Think of the
fun of my staying and seeing it and having a finger in the making, just
a little quiet finger that nobody knows about but you and me! United
States of the World, Dick; and you are going after the Man Higher Up
just as you went after those blackguards into the Desert." She laughed
joyously, joyous as a child, swinging out her arms to the sweep of the
roaring Forest wind. "Don't look shocked. I'll not stay on alone at
the Ranch House for the Rookery to talk about! I'll insist on the
foreman marrying an aged house keeper for me; or I'll move over to the
Mission School; or--Oh, I'll plan out something; but I am not going to
leave the West."

Wayland suddenly wheeled his horse across he