ng deeply. Perceptibly the
air thinned; one's lungs were taxed to capacity here; the blood
clamoured for deeper drafts, for more oxygen. When they came to the top
Gloria dropped down, panting, though they had stopped many times on the
way. She closed her eyes and her senses swam through a vast blur. King
gave her a drink from his canteen; she merely thanked him with her eyes.

But in ten minutes she had rested and was on her feet, her slim body
leaning against the wind. He stood by her and they looked out across the
mountains. For what seemed to Gloria a thousand miles there was the
broken wilderness of mountains gashed with gorges, crowned with peaks,
painted with sunlight and distance, glinting white here, veiled in
purple there. She gasped at the bigness of it; it spoke of the vastness
of the world and of the world's primitive savagery. And yet it did not
repel; it fascinated and its message had the seeming of an old,
oft-told, and half-forgotten tale. It threatened with its spires as
cruel as bared fangs, and yet it beckoned and invited with its blue
distances. Always, since the first man fashioned the first club and made
him a knife of a jagged flint, has mankind battled with the great
mother, the earth who bore him. He has striven with her for his food,
warred with her for his raiment, entrenched himself against the
merciless attack of the seasons, winter to stab him with icy spear,
summer to consume him. And always has he loved her and honoured her,
since she is his great mother. Gloria, her thoughts confused by
conflicting instincts, inspired and awed, drew closer to King.

"--But to be out here alone!" The utter, utter loneliness of it. She
looked at him with new, curious eyes. "Doesn't it bear down on you;
don't you feel at times that the loneliness----"

He understood.

"I am used to it, you know. I have never known what it was out here to
feel lonely until----"

She waited for him to finish, her eyes on his. Until----?

"Until after our first ride together," he said.

Again she understood. And now she looked away hastily and her cheeks
reddened. He was about to tell her that he loved her; his eyes had told
her; his lips were shaping to the words "I love you!" And she was
suddenly conscious of a wild nutter in her heart; she was trembling as
though terrified. Other men had told her "I love you." Many times and in
many ways--smiling, with a laugh, with a sigh--whispering the words or
saying them half s