nd; and your breakfast is so good. I'm all right now, Fred."

"Yes, you're all right now." Fred lit a cigarette and looked at her
critically as her head emerged into the sun again. "You get up every
morning just a little bit handsomer than you were the day before. I'd
love you just as much if you were not turning into one of the loveliest
women I've ever seen; but you are, and that's a fact to be reckoned
with." He watched her across the thin line of smoke he blew from his
lips. "What are you going to do with all that beauty and all that
talent, Miss Kronborg?"

She turned away to the fire again. "I don't know what you're talking
about," she muttered with an awkwardness which did not conceal her
pleasure.

Ottenburg laughed softly. "Oh, yes, you do! Nobody better! You're a
close one, but you give yourself away sometimes, like everybody else. Do
you know, I've decided that you never do a single thing without an
ulterior motive." He threw away his cigarette, took out his
tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe. "You ride and fence and walk
and climb, but I know that all the while you're getting somewhere in
your mind. All these things are instruments; and I, too, am an
instrument." He looked up in time to intercept a quick, startled glance
from Thea. "Oh, I don't mind," he chuckled; "not a bit. Every woman,
every interesting woman, has ulterior motives, many of 'em less
creditable than yours. It's your constancy that amuses me. You must have
been doing it ever since you were two feet high."

Thea looked slowly up at her companion's good-humored face. His eyes,
sometimes too restless and sympathetic in town, had grown steadier and
clearer in the open air. His short curly beard and yellow hair had
reddened in the sun and wind. The pleasant vigor of his person was
always delightful to her, something to signal to and laugh with in a
world of negative people. With Fred she was never becalmed. There was
always life in the air, always something coming and going, a rhythm of
feeling and action,--stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she
looked at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to be
frank with him. She was not willfully holding anything back. But, on the
other hand, she could not force things that held themselves back. "Yes,
it was like that when I was little," she said at last. "I had to be
close, as you call it, or go under. But I didn't know I had been like
that since you came. I've had not