“And women are like horses,” thought Ruth as they rode on.  The night was paling about them, and she watched the rolling champaign as little by little it took shape, emerging from the morning mist and passing from monochrome into faint colours:  for albeit the upper sky was clear as ever, mist filled the hollows of the hills and rolled up their sides like a smoke.

“Look!” commanded Sir Oliver, reining up and turning in his saddle.

He pointed with his horse-whip.  Behind them, over a tree-clad hill, lay a long purple cloud; and above it, while he pointed, the sun thrust its edge as it were the rim of a golden paten.  Ruth wheeled her mare about, to face the spectacle, and at that moment the cloud parted horizontally as though a hand had ripped the veil across.  A flood of gold poured through the rent, dazzling her eyes.

The sun mounted and swam free:  the upper portion of the veil floated off like a wisp and drifted down the wind.  Where the glory had shone, it lingered through tint after tint—­rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green—­ and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of the heavens.

Sir Oliver withdrew his eyes and sought hers.  “When I find the need of faith,” he said, “I shall turn sun-worshipper.”

“You have never found that need?” she asked slowly.

“Never,” he confessed.  “And you?”

“Never as a need.  I mean,” she explained, “that though I always despised religion—­yes, always, even before I came to hate it—­I never doubted that some wisdom must be at watch and at work all around me, ordering the sun and stars, for instance, and separating right from wrong.  I just cannot understand how any one can do without a faith of that sort:  it’s as necessary as breath.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “To me one Jehovah’s as good as another, as unnecessary, and as incredible.  I find it easier to believe that chaos hurtled around until it struck out some working balance; that the stars learned their places pretty much as men and women are learning theirs to-day.  A painful process, I’ll grant you, and damnably tedious; but they came to it in the end, and so in the end, maybe, will poor imitative man.  But,” he broke off, “this faith of yours must have failed you, once.”

She shivered.  “No; I made no claim on it, you see.  Perhaps”—­with a little smile—­“I did not think myself important enough.  I only know that, whatever was right, those men were horribly wrong:  for it must be wrong to be cruel.  Then I woke up, and you were beside me—­”

She would have added, “How could I doubt, then?” But her voice failed her, and she wheeled about that he might not see her tears.

He, too, turned his horse.  They rode on for a few paces in silence.

“I wish,” she said, recovering her voice—­“I wish, for your sake, you could have felt what I have been feeling since we left Sabines; the goodness all about us, watching us out of the night and the stars.”