ws of the hills and rolled up their sides
like a smoke.

"Look!" commanded Sir Oliver, reining up and turning in his saddle.

He pointed with his horse-whip. Behind them, over a tree-clad hill, lay
a long purple cloud; and above it, while he pointed, the sun thrust its
edge as it were the rim of a golden paten. Ruth wheeled her mare about,
to face the spectacle, and at that moment the cloud parted horizontally
as though a hand had ripped the veil across. A flood of gold poured
through the rent, dazzling her eyes.

The sun mounted and swam free: the upper portion of the veil floated off
like a wisp and drifted down the wind. Where the glory had shone, it
lingered through tint after tint--rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green--
and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of the heavens.

Sir Oliver withdrew his eyes and sought hers. "When I find the need of
faith," he said, "I shall turn sun-worshipper."

"You have never found that need?" she asked slowly.

"Never," he confessed. "And you?"

"Never as a need. I mean," she explained, "that though I always
despised religion--yes, always, even before I came to hate it--I never
doubted that some wisdom must be at watch and at work all around me,
ordering the sun and stars, for instance, and separating right from
wrong. I just cannot understand how any one can do without a faith of
that sort: it's as necessary as breath."

He shrugged his shoulders. "To me one Jehovah's as good as another, as
unnecessary, and as incredible. I find it easier to believe that chaos
hurtled around until it struck out some working balance; that the stars
learned their places pretty much as men and women are learning theirs
to-day. A painful process, I'll grant you, and damnably tedious; but
they came to it in the end, and so in the end, maybe, will poor
imitative man. But," he broke off, "this faith of yours must have
failed you, once."

She shivered. "No; I made no claim on it, you see. Perhaps"--with a
little smile--"I did not think myself important enough. I only know
that, whatever was right, those men were horribly wrong: for it _must_
be wrong to be cruel. Then I woke up, and you were beside me--"

She would have added, "How could I doubt, then?" But her voice failed
her, and she wheeled about that he might not see her tears.

He, too, turned his horse. They rode on for a few paces in silence.

"I wish," she said, recovering her voice--"I wish, for your s