ence. The next morning--the matter
seemed to arrange itself with very little help from either--they were to
have a ride together This time they would take their lunch. When they
said good-night Gloria impulsively gave him her two hands; he remembered
how she had done that the first time he had seen her. Her face was
lifted up to his; in the starlight he saw her eyes shining softly,
gloriously; he saw her mouth, the lips barely apart. For an instant his
hands shut down hard on hers; he felt the faint pressure of her own in
return. When they heard her mother in the doorway calling, "Gloria,
where are you?" they started apart. A strange and unanalysed sense of
secrecy had fallen upon them; Gloria whispered, "Good-night, Mark," and
then calling, "Here I am, mamma; just cooling off," she went skipping
down the porch, slipped her arm about her mother, and carried her back
into the house.

* * * * *

Before the new day was fairly come they met in the fringe of pines.
Again they shook hands; again for an instant they stood as they had
stood last night. They were tremblingly close to the first kiss.
Suddenly Gloria, with her colour high and her eyes hidden under lashes
which King marvelled at, lashes laid tenderly against her cheeks, pulled
her hands out of his and began drawing on her gauntlets. Gravely, as
though here were a rite to be approached solemnly, he lifted her into
the saddle. They turned their horses and rode up the ridge among the
trees.

They heard together the first sleepy twitterings of hidden birds; they
saw the black shadows thinning; they watched the light come upon the
peaks. Ridges shook off the shadow cloaks, seemed to quiver as they
awoke to the new day, grew flushed and rosy. The chill of the early
morning air was like wine, sparkling, tingling in the blood. The smell
of resinous woods was insistent, the fine bouquet to the rare vintage.
The day, the world, themselves--all were young together--all awakening
to the full, true, and triumphant meaning of life. They rode a mile with
never a spoken word but in a never-broken communion; then it was Gloria
who spoke first, saying, as she had said once before: "I love it!"

They followed narrow trails through the ceanothus-bushes, riding one
behind the other; they climbed steep trails among the pines; then went
down steep trails among granite boulders; they rode side by side through
little upland valleys and grassy meadows. The