cudgelled her brains. Finally, since he seemed quite serious, and
she knew that wisdom lay in pleasing the male of the species in small
and unimportant matters, she sought to reply.

"The Sphinx or the Pyramids, I'd guess," she offered.

"Naturally," he returned. "And what will you say when I introduce you to
the Pharaoh who was a big, husky giant before Thebes was thought of?"

Again she looked to see a twinkle of jest in his eyes.

"Pharaoh?" she said. "Just a tree? Over two or three thousand years
old!"

"By at least another thousand," he rejoined triumphantly. "And as
staunch an old gentleman as you'll find."

Even Gloria, a poor little city-bred angel, must muse upon the
statement. Having caught her interest he told her picturesquely of his
old friends; how they had dwelt on serenely while peoples were born and
empires rose and fell; while Rome smote Greece and both went down in the
dust; while Columbus pushed his three boats across the seas; while the
world itself passed from one phase to another; how they were all but
co-eternal with eternity.

"When you think how these old fellows were a thousand years old when the
Christ was a little boy," he ended simply, "you will begin to realize
the sort of things they have a way of saying to you while you lie still
and look up and up, and still up among their branches that seem at
night to brush against the stars."

She let her fancies drift in the leash of his. But again they left the
picturesque ancient trees and returned to him. A little smile touched
her lips and was gone before he was sure of it; she was thinking that a
man like King kept always in his heart something of the simplicity of a
little child; she wondered if she herself, though so much younger in
actual years, were not worlds more sophisticated. For his part King
noted that she displayed to-day none of that chattering, singing gaiety
of their former rides together; he remembered, sympathetically, that she
had had very little sleep last night, and that she had endured a
wearisome twenty-four hours before, and that the long, nervous strain
under which she had struggled must certainly have told upon her, both
physically and mentally. So, believing that she would be grateful for
silence, he grew silent with her.

Further and ever further into the heart of the solitudes they rode
through the quiet hours of the forenoon, with Gloria ever more
abstracted and Mark King holding apart from her, doing her