“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 nervously, and we launched our horses through a willow fringe and away over a soft, sandy intervale, riding knee to knee till the wind whistled in our ears and the sand rose fountain high at every stride of our bounding horses.

“Ah!” she sighed, drawing bridle.  “That clears the heart of silly troubles.  Was it not glorious?  Like a plunge to the throat in an icy pool!”

Her face, radiant, transfigured, was turned to the north, where, glittering under the westward sun, the sunny waters of the Vlaie sparkled between green reeds and rushes.  Beyond, smoky blue mountains tumbled into two uneven walls, spread southeast and southwest, flanking the flat valley of the Vlaie.

Thousands of blackbirds chattered and croaked and trilled and whistled in the reeds, flitting upward, with a flash of scarlet on their wings; hovering, dropping again amid a ceaseless chorus from the half-hidden flock.  Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons.  Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets.

Across the distant grassy flat two deer moved, grazing.  We rode to the east, skirting the marshes, following a trail made by cattle, until beyond the flats we saw the green roof of the pleasure-house which Sir William Johnson had built for himself.  Our ride together was nearly ended.

As at the same thought we tightened bridle and looked at each other gravely.

“All rides end,” I said.

“Ay, like happiness.”

“Both may be renewed.”

“Until they end again.”

“Until they end forever.”

She clasped her bare hands on her horse’s neck, sitting with bent head as though lost in sombre memories.

“What ends forever might endure forever,” I said.

“Not our rides together,” she murmured.  “You must return to the South one day.  I must wed....  Where shall we be this day a year hence?”