ht horses with him and offered to give Mildred a mount
whenever she liked. Milly had learned the rudiments of the art, but she
was too timid to care for riding. Mildred, on the other hand, delighted
in the swift motion through the air, the sensation of the strong
bounding life almost incorporated with her own, and if she had moments
of terror she had more of ecstatic daring. She and Davison ended by
riding together once or twice a week.

Interesting as Mildred found Maxwell Davison's companionship, it did not
altogether conduce to her happiness. She who had been so content to be
merely alive, began now to chafe at the narrow limits of her existence.
He opened the wide horizons of the world before her, and her soul seemed
native to them. One April afternoon they rode to Wytham together. The
woods of Wytham clothe a long ridge of hill around which the young
Thames sweeps in a strong curve and through them a grass ride runs
unbroken for a mile and a half. Now side by side, now passing and
repassing each other, they had "kept the great pace" along the track,
the horses slackening their speed somewhat as they went down the dip,
only to spring forward with fresh impetus, lifting their hind-quarters
gallantly to the rise; then given their heads for the last burst along
the straight bit to the drop of the hill, away they went in passionate
competition, foam-flecked and sending the clods flying from their
hurrying hoofs.

A mile and a half of galloping only serves to whet the appetite of a
well-girt horse, and the foaming rivals hardly allowed themselves to be
pulled up at the edge of a steep grassy slope, where already here and
there a yellow cowslip bud was beginning to break its pale silken
sheath. At length their impatient dancing was over, and they stood
quiet, resigned to the will of the incomprehensible beings who
controlled them. But Mildred's blood was dancing still and she abandoned
herself to the pleasure of it, undistracted by speech. Beyond the
shining Thames, wide-curving through its broad green meadows, and the
gray bridge and tower of Eynsham, that great landscape, undulating,
clothed in the mystery of moving cloud-shadows, gave her an agreeable
impression of being a view into a strange country, hundreds of miles
away from Oxford and the beaten track. But Maxwell's eyes were fixed
upon her.

The wood about them was just breaking into the various beauty of spring
foliage, emerald and gold and red; a few trees s