surprised and a trifle perplexed. "I seem to hear
you when you are mute, and I turn to find you looking at me, as though
you had asked me something."

We rode on, thoughtful, silent, aware of a new and wordless intimacy.

"It is pleasant to be with you," she said at last. "I have never before
found untroubled contentment save when I am alone.... Everything that
you see and think of on this ride I seem to see and think of, too, and
know that you are observing with the same delight that I feel.... Nor
does anything in the world disturb my happiness. Nor do you vex me with
silence when I would have you speak; nor with speech when I ride
dreaming--as I do, cousin, for hours and hours--not sadly, but in the
sweetest peace--"

Her voice died out like a June breeze; our horses, ear to ear moved on
slowly in the fragrant silence.

"To ride ... forever ... together," she mused, "looking with perfect
content on all the world.... I teaching you, or you me; ... it's all one
for the delight it gives to be alive and young.... And no trouble to
await us, ... nothing malicious to do a harm to any living thing.... I
could renounce Heaven for that.... Could you?"

"Yes.... For less."

"I know I ask too much; grief makes us purer, fitting us for the company
of blessed souls. They say that even war may be a holy thing--though we
are commanded otherwise.... Cousin, at moments a demon rises in me and I
desire some forbidden thing so ardently, so passionately, that it seems
as if I could fight a path through paradise itself to gain what I
desire.... Do you feel so?"

"Yes."

"Is it not consuming--terrible to be so shaken?... Yet I never gain my
desire, for there in my path my own self rises to confront me, blocking
my way. And I can never pass--never.... Once, in winter, our agent, Mr.
Fonda, came driving a trained caribou to a sledge. A sweet, gentle
thing, with dark, mild eyes, and I was mad to drive it--mad, cousin! But
Sir Lupus learned that it had trodden and gored a man, and put me on my
honor not to drive it. And all day Sir Lupus was away at Kingsborough
for his rents and I free to drive the sledge, ... and I was mad to do
it--and could not. And the pretty beast stabled with our horses, and
every day I might have driven it.... I never did.... It hurts yet,
cousin.... How strange is it that to us the single word, 'honor,' blocks
the road and makes the King's own highway no thorough-fare forever!"

She gathered bridle nervous