ande bridge without
experiencing anything which marred the general effect of a stage set for a
Passion Play--but with the actors missing; and then they saw a carriage
approaching from the Mexican side.

Harboro knew the horses. They were the General Manager's. And presently he
recognized the coachman. The horses were moving at a walk, very slowly;
but at length Harboro recognized the General Manager's wife, reclining
under a white silk sunshade and listening to the vivacious chatter of a
young woman by her side. They would be coming over to attend the services
in the Episcopal church in Eagle Pass, Harboro realized. Then he
recognized the young woman, too. He had met her at one of the affairs to
which he had been invited. He recalled her as a girl whose voice was too
high-pitched for a reposeful effect, and who created the impression that
she looked upon the social life of the border as a rather amusing
adventure.

You might have supposed that they considered themselves the sole occupants
of the world as they advanced, perched on their high seat; and this,
Harboro realized, was the true fashionable air. It was an instinct rather
than a pose, he believed, and he was pondering that problem in psychology
which has to do with the fact that when people ride or drive they appear
to have a different mental organism from those who walk.

Then something happened. The carriage was now almost at hand, and Harboro
saw the coachman turn his head slightly, as if to hear better. Then he
leaned forward and rattled the whip in its place, and the horses set off
at a sharp trot. There was a rule against trotting on the bridge, but
there are people everywhere who are not required to observe rules.

Harboro paused, ready to lift his hat. He liked the General Manager's
wife. But the occupants of the carriage passed without seeing him. And
Harboro got the impression that there was something determined in the
casual air with which the two women looked straight before them. He got an
odd feeling that the most finely tempered steel of all lies underneath the
delicate golden filigree of social custom and laws.

He was rather pleased at a conclusion which came to him: people of that
kind really _did_ see, then. They only pretended not to see. And then he
felt the blood pumping through the veins in his neck.

"What is it?" asked Sylvia, with that directness which Harboro
comprehended and respected.

"Why, those ladies ... they didn't seem qu