the mountain-side, watched till the pretty confusion of the water, with its half-interpreted voices, had dizzied and dazed her to the point of complete forgetfulness of self.  She had entered into a sort of a trance, a Nirvana ...  She shook herself out of it, ate her lunch and scrambled quickly back to “Nigger Baby.”  It was late afternoon when she crossed the mountain glades.  Their look had mysteriously changed.  There was something almost uncanny now about their brilliance in the sunset light, and when she rode into the streaked darkness of the woods, they were full of ghostly, unintelligible sounds.  To rest her muscles she was riding with her right leg thrown over the horn as though on a side saddle—­a great mass of flowers was tied in front of her.  She had opened her shirt at the neck and her head was bare.  She was singing to keep up her heart.  Then, suddenly, she had no more need of singing.  She saw Cosme walking toward her up the trail.

His face lacked all its vivid color.  It was rather haggard and stern.  The devils he had swept out of his heart a fortnight earlier had, since then, been violently entertained.  He stepped out of the path and waited for her, his hands on his hips.  But, as she rode down, she saw this look melt.  The blood crept up to his cheeks, the light to his eyes.  It was like a rock taking the sun.  She had smiled at him with all the usual exquisite grace and simplicity.  When she came beside him, she drew rein, and at the same instant he put his hand on the pony’s bridle.  He looked up at her dumbly, and for some reason she, too, found it impossible to speak.  She could see that he was breathing fast through parted lips and that the lips were both cruel and sensitive.  His hand slid back along “Nigger Baby’s” neck, paused, and rested on her knee.  Then, suddenly, he came a big step closer, threw both his arms, tightening with a python’s strength, about her and hid his face against her knees.

“Sheila,” he said thickly.  He looked up with a sort of anguish into her face.  “Sheila, if you are not fit to be the mother of my children, you are sure fit for any man to love.”

Her soft, slim body hardened against him even before her face.  They stared at each other for a minute.

“Let me get down,” said Sheila.

He stepped back, not quite understanding.  She dropped off the horse, dragging her flowers with her, and faced him.  She did not feel small or slender.  She felt as high as a hill, although she had to look up at him so far.  Her anger had its head against the sky.

“Why do you talk about a man’s love?” she asked him with a queer sort of patience.  “I think—­I hope—­that you don’t know anything about a man’s love, oh, the way men love!” She thought with swift pain of Jim, of Sylvester; “Oh, the way they love!” And she found that, under her breath, she was sobbing, “Dickie!  Dickie!” as though her heart had called.