's words, but her woman's eyes read what he
could not say and became bafflingly deep as she turned them away across
the gold and blue and green of the morning.

Boone's arms twitched at his sides under the fret of his inarticulate
fulness of spirit. The only language left in him was that primitive
language of action. His, under the superimposed structure of acquired
things, was a heritage which could know no love that was not a
soul-stirring passion; no hate that was not a withering fire.

Now it seemed to him that under the hurricane power of his love for Anne
Masters the pillars of the world shook. He caught her in his arms and
pressed her to him until her hair brushed his cheek and her heart-beat
could be felt against his breast.

His voice, at last regained, was broken like that of a man sobbing.

"I can't say it--there aren't any words--for it!"

All his previous love-making had made Anne remember that first agitated
confession, "I think of you like the evening star--you're as far out of
reach as if you were up there in heaven." Always there had been
something almost humble in his deference, as if he had admitted himself
a vassal lifting eyes to royalty. Now he was seizing her with the fierce
proprietary embrace of one who claims his own and who will not be
denied. The arms that held her pressed her till they hurt in the embrace
of the untamed man for his own woman, and, since for her too, love was
the great paradox, the fierce and ardent flood that had swept him lifted
her on its tide and rang through her with a sort of wild triumph.

"You--you don't have to say anything--now," she told him somewhat
faintly. If it had been up yonder, with the jutting escarpments of the
hills about them, this wild moment would have shaped itself in more
orthodox fashion with the eternal fitnesses. But the moment left them
with something of tumultuous exaltation, as though they had burst
together through the shell of a superficial world and touched the
essentials.

After a little, when again they could realize the more tranquil voices
of the birds and the little winds, Anne, with a hand on each of his
shoulders, spoke slowly and very thoughtfully:

"I don't need to be told, Boone. If I didn't know, life wouldn't be
worth much to me."

"When I'm away from you," he answered still in a shaken voice, "I always
hear your voice. I always see you, yet when I come back to you, you're
always a surprise to me--I find that my memory