hink you know Colorado when
you've crossed it once on the railway. This is the Colorado which you
seldom see."

She was in rapture over the glory of color, the waving grasses of
smooth hillsides, and the radiant dapple of light and shadow beneath
the groves of vivid yellow aspens. The cactus and Spanish dagger, and
the ever-present sage bush of the lower levels, had disappeared,
crow's-foot and blue-joint grasses swung in the wind. The bright flame
of the painted cup and the purple of the asters still lighted up the
aisles of the pines in sheltered places.

"There are many more in August," he explained. "The frost has swept
them all away."

"Is this our stream?" she asked.

"Yes, we cross it many times."

"How small it is."

"Are you tired?"

"Not at all."

He came close to her to listen to her breathing. "You must not do too
much. If you find yourself out of breath stop and ride."

"I want to be cured."

He laughed. "By the way you lead up this trail I don't think you need
medicine. I never finish wondering whether you are the same girl I met
first----"

She flashed a glance back at him. "I'm not. I'm another person."

"That shows what three months of this climate will do."

"Climate did not do it."

"What did?"

"You did." She kept marching steadily forward, her head held very
straight indeed.

"I wish you would wait a moment," he pleaded.

"I am very thirsty--I want to reach the spring."

"But, dear girl, you can't keep this up."

"Can't I? Watch me and see."

She seemed possessed of some miraculous staff, for she mounted the
steep trail as lightly as a fawn. Clement was in an agony of
apprehension lest she should overdo and fall fainting in the path.
This ecstasy of activity was most dangerously persistent.

It was past noon when they came out of the aspens and pines into the
little smooth slope of meadow which lay between the low peaks which
were already crusted with snow. In the midst of the orange and purple
and red of the grasses lay a deep, dark pool of water--as beautiful as
her eyes, it seemed to him.

"Here is the spring," Clement called to the girl.

"I knew it," she said.

"Wait," he called again. "I must drink with you."

He hastened up and dipped a cup into the water and handed it to her.

"Now drink confusion to disease."

"Confusion!" She drank. "Oh, isn't it sweet? I never knew before how
good water was. But here, drink. You are dying of thirst, too." She
handed