usical, hysterical. "Certainly nothing is
wrong. What could be wrong when two people who have so much in common as
you and I, who touch at so many places, are just married and alone?
Wrong: the preposterous idea!"

She was silent, and of a sudden the all-surrounding stillness seemed to
be intensified. For at last, at last the man understood and was looking
at her; looking at her wordlessly, with an expression that was terrible
in its haunting suggestion of unutterable sadness, of infinite pain. He
did not say a word; he merely looked at her; but shade by shade as the
seconds passed there vanished from his face to the last bit every trace
of the glory that had been its predecessor. Not until it was gone did
the girl realise to the full what she had done, realise the mortal stab
she had inflicted; then of a sudden came realisation in a gust and
contrition unspeakable. Swiftly as rain follows a thunderclap her mood
changed, her own face, hysterically tense, relaxed in a flood of tears.
In an abandon of remorse her arms were about him, her face was pressed
close to his face.

"Forgive me, How," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm nervous
and irresponsible, that's all. Please forgive me; please!"

* * * * *

At a dawdling little prairie stream, superciliously ignored by the
map-maker, yet then and now travelling its aimless journey from nowhere
to nowhere under the name of Mink Creek, they halted for the night.

Though they had been driving steadily all the afternoon, save once when,
far to the south, they had detected the blot of a grazing herd, they had
seen no sign of human presence. They saw no indication now. The short
fall day was drawing to a close. The sun, red as maple leaf in autumn,
was level with the earth when How Landor pulled up beside the low
sloping bank, and, the girl watching from her observation seat in the
old surrey, unharnessed and watered the team and hobbled them amid the
tall frost-cured grass to feed.

"Now for the tent," he said on returning. "Will your highness have it
face north, south, east, or west?"

"East, please, How. I want to see the sun when it first comes up in the
morning."

With the methodical swiftness of one accustomed to his work the man set
about his task. The tent, his own, was in the rear of the waggon box.
The furnishings, likewise his own, were close packed beside. More
quickly than the watcher fancied it possible the whole bega