ut on a small
stretch of sand, turned its gray head and its pointed black nose this
way and that, never seeing them, and then rolled upon its back in the
warm dry sand. After a minute of rolling, it got on its feet again,
shook its fur, and trotted away.

Then the bridegroom husband opened his shy heart deep down.

"I am like that fellow," he said dreamily. "I have often done the same."
And stretching slowly his arms and legs, he lay full length upon his
back, letting his head rest upon her. "If I could talk his animal
language, I could talk to him," he pursued. "And he would say to me:
'Come and roll on the sands. Where's the use of fretting? What's the
gain in being a man? Come roll on the sands with me.' That's what he
would say." The Virginian paused. "But," he continued, "the trouble is,
I am responsible. If that could only be forgot forever by you and me!"
Again he paused and went on, always dreamily. "Often when I have camped
here, it has made me want to become the ground, become the water, become
the trees, mix with the whole thing. Not know myself from it. Never
unmix again. Why is that?" he demanded, looking at her. "What is it? You
don't know, nor I don't. I wonder would everybody feel that way here?"

"I think not everybody," she answered.

"No; none except the ones who understand things they can't put words to.
But you did!" He put up a hand and touched her softly. "You understood
about this place. And that's what makes it--makes you and me as we are
now--better than my dreams. And my dreams were pretty good."

He sighed with supreme quiet and happiness, and seemed to stretch his
length closer to the earth. And so he lay, and talked to her as he had
never talked to any one, not even to himself. Thus she learned secrets
of his heart new to her: his visits here, what they were to him, and why
he had chosen it for their bridal camp. "What I did not know at all,"
he said, "was the way a man can be pining for--for this--and never guess
what is the matter with him."

When he had finished talking, still he lay extended and serene; and she
looked down at him and the wonderful change that had come over him,
like a sunrise. Was this dreamy boy the man of two days ago? It seemed
a distance immeasurable; yet it was two days only since that wedding
eve when she had shrunk from him as he stood fierce and implacable. She
could look back at that dark hour now, although she could not speak of
it. She had seen destruct