He laughed and went off after the horses, singing at the top of his voice.  She stood very still, looking off after him, her brows puckering into a shadowy frown.  Oh, if she could only read herself as he allowed her to read him; if she could only be as sure of Gloria as she was of Mark; if she could only look deep into her heart as she looked into his.  But she could not!  His heart was like the clear pool just yonder across which the sunshine lay and far down in which she could see the stones and pebbles as through so much clear glass; hers was like the rushing stream above, eddying and swirling and hiding itself under its own light spray.  All day long she had tried to see what lay under the surface. Did she love Mark King?  She had thrilled to him as she had thrilled to no other man; but that had been in the springtime.  Twice then she had been sure that she loved him.  But that was so long ago.  And now that she had allowed him to carry her out of the quicksands?  What now?  She was so borne down by all that she had lived through; he was so much a part of the mountainous solitudes towering about them.  And was she one to love the wilderness—­for long?  Or did it not begin to bear down upon her uncertain spirit?  Did it not menace and frighten and, in the end, would it not repel?  Oh, if she had only let him go on alone this morning; if she had remained where she could rest and think and thus come to see clearly, even into her own troubled heart!

Their first hour after lunch led them through a region which, given over to silence itself, denied them any considerable opportunity for conversation.  King rode ahead, turning off to the left from their resting-place by the pool, and riding through a sea of grey brush, following a narrow trail made by deer.  Then the mountain-side reared its barrier and made all forward and upward progress slow and toilsome.  Three times they dismounted and King led the horses; here Gloria clung to the steep mountain-side, looking fearfully down into the monster gorge carved at its base, dwelling with fascinated fancies on the thought of slipping, losing handhold and foothold and plunging down among the jagged boulders strewing the lower levels.  There was really no great danger, she told herself over and over; King’s cheery calls reassured her; no danger so long as they went forward on foot.  But now and then when a horse’s foot slipped and a wild cascade of loose soil and rocks went hurtling downward, she grew rigid with apprehension.

But there was only an hour of this.  Thereafter they rode down a long slope and into a long, narrow, twisting ravine, rocky cliffs on one hand and a noisy stream on the other, a fair trail underfoot.  Nearly always now King rode ahead, finding the way for her; and Gloria, her spirits drooping again with the advancing afternoon, vaguely oppressed by the solemn stillness about her, was glad that she too could be silent.  When he did call to her she needed only nod or smile; he turned to point out some rare view that appealed to him, a vista worth her seeing, a cascade or a fall of cliff, or a ferny nook, or perhaps a late ceanothus-blossom.  He pointed out a scampering Douglas squirrel and had her hearken to a quail.