Anything, Mark?"

"I pray with all my heart and soul that I always may!"

Gloria seemed to rest through the noon hour and to brighten. When she
saw him the second time look at the sun she got up from the ground and
said:

"Time to go on? I'm ready. And after that banquet I feel all _me_
again!"

He laughed and went off after the horses, singing at the top of his
voice. She stood very still, looking off after him, her brows puckering
into a shadowy frown. Oh, if she could only read herself as he allowed
her to read him; if she could only be as sure of Gloria as she was of
Mark; if she could only look deep into her heart as she looked into his.
But she could not! His heart was like the clear pool just yonder across
which the sunshine lay and far down in which she could see the stones
and pebbles as through so much clear glass; hers was like the rushing
stream above, eddying and swirling and hiding itself under its own light
spray. All day long she had tried to see what lay under the surface.
_Did she love Mark King_? She had thrilled to him as she had thrilled to
no other man; but that had been in the springtime. Twice then she had
been sure that she loved him. But that was so long ago. And now that she
had allowed him to carry her out of the quicksands? What now? She was so
borne down by all that she had lived through; he was so much a part of
the mountainous solitudes towering about them. And was she one to love
the wilderness--for long? Or did it not begin to bear down upon her
uncertain spirit? Did it not menace and frighten and, in the end, would
it not repel? Oh, if she had only let him go on alone this morning; if
she had remained where she could rest and think and thus come to see
clearly, even into her own troubled heart!

Their first hour after lunch led them through a region which, given
over to silence itself, denied them any considerable opportunity for
conversation. King rode ahead, turning off to the left from their
resting-place by the pool, and riding through a sea of grey brush,
following a narrow trail made by deer. Then the mountain-side reared its
barrier and made all forward and upward progress slow and toilsome.
Three times they dismounted and King led the horses; here Gloria clung
to the steep mountain-side, looking fearfully down into the monster
gorge carved at its base, dwelling with fascinated fancies on the
thought of slipping, losing handhold and foothold and plunging down
among the jag