ng and waning on her white
skin from neck to temples; and sustained his gaze to the limit of
endurance. Then again in her ears sounded the soft crash of her senses;
he swung wide in his stirrups, looking recklessly into her eyes. A
delicate sense of intoxication stilled all speech between them for a
moment. Then, head bowed, eyes fixed on her bridle hand, the other hand,
ungloved, lying hotly unresponsive in his, she rode slowly forward at
his side. Face to face with all the mad unasked questions of destiny and
fate and chance still before her--all the cold problems of truth and
honour still to be discussed with that stirring, painful pulse in her
heart which she had known as conscience--silently, head bent, she rode
into the west with the man she must send away.

Far to the north-east, above a sentinel pine which marks the outskirts
of the flat-woods, streaks like smoke drifted in the sky--the wild-fowl
leaving the lagoons. On the Lantana Road they drew bridle at a sign from
her; then she wheeled her horse and sat silent in her saddle, staring
into the western wilderness.

The character of the country had changed while they had been advancing
along this white sandy road edged with jungle; for now west and south
the Florida wilderness stretched away, the strange "Flat-woods,"
deceptively open, almost park-like in their monotony where, as far as
the eye could see, glade after glade, edged by the stately vivid green
pines, opened invitingly into other glades through endlessly charming
perspective. At every step one was prepared to come upon some handsome
mansion centring this park--some bridge spanning the shallow crystal
streams that ran out of jasmine thickets--some fine driveway curving
through the open woods. But this was the wilderness, uninhabited,
unplotted. No dwelling stood within its vistas; no road led out or in;
no bridge curved over the silently moving waters. West and south-west
into the unknown must he go who follows the lure of those peaceful,
sunny glades where there are no hills, no valleys, nothing save trees
and trees and trees again, and shallow streams with jungle edging them,
and lonely lakes set with cypress, and sunny clearings, never made by
human hands, where last year's grass, shoulder-high, silvers under the
white sun of the South.

Half a hundred miles westward lay the great inland lake; south-west, the
Everglades. The Hillsboro trail ran south-west between the upper and
lower chain of lak