the platform and read poetry dedicated to
him?" she demanded.

"Poetry, Mary? You grow ambitious. Not poetry--foolish doggerel. Or
someone will read it for you."

He had not failed to watch the play of her expression. She had received
all his nonsense, announced in his best style of simulated forensic
grandeur, with a certain unchanging serenity which was unamused: which
was, indeed, barely interested.

"And someone else shall write it, for I don't think of any verses,"
she said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Besides, I shall not
be there."

"Not be there! People will remark your absence!"

"Will they?" she asked, thoughtfully, as if that had not occurred to her.
"No, they will be too occupied with the persiflage. I am going to ride
out to the pass in the morning very early--before daybreak."

"But"--he was positively frolicsome as he caught her hands and waved
them back and forth, while he rocked his shoulders--"when you are
stubborn, Mary, have your way. I will make your excuses. And I to work
now. It is the hour of the hoe," as he called all hours except those of
darkness and the hot midday.

For Jasper Ewold was no idler in the affairs of his ranch or of the town.
Few city men were so busy. His everlasting talk was incidental, like the
babbling of a brook which, however, keeps steadily flowing on; and the
stored scholarship of his mind was supplemented by long evenings with no
other relaxation but reading. Now as he went down the path he broke into
song; and when the Doge sang it was something awful, excusable only by
the sheer happiness that brought on the attack.

Mary had important sewing, which this morning she chose to do in her room
rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters
on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden,
peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner
world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the
poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or
Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air is balmy.

And to-morrow! Out to Galeria in the fervor of a pilgrim to some shrine,
with the easy movement of her pony and the rigid lines of the pass
gradually drawing nearer and the sky ever distant! She would be mistress
of her thoughts in all the silent glamour of morning on the desert. She
would hear the train stop at the station, its heavy effort as it pulled
out,