boom!" The Doge
pursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You are
pretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at the
opening in the hedge.

"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days.
I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It is
glorious to be alive, O Doge!"

"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you can
have another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longer
and I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such an
afternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that you
can grow dates the equal of mine."

"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!"

"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack.

Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left it
to meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not at
home. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been so
frequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence.
Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread,
his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. He
had even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advised
him to stir it into his coffee, instead.

When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to ask
how he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never a
reference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a little
shy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she had
been of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocations
while he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear her
talk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range;
enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past;
enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky,
sharing the life of the same community with her.

And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was never
out of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her too
well to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thing
she had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. This
afternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenly
became commanding in a fresh-born suspense.

As he walked b