Ted and Ruth now came panting up to them, and the four climbed together to the hilltop.

Roberta turned and scanned the sun.  Immediately she decreed that it was time to be off, reminding her protesting young brother that the November dusk falls early and that it would be dark before they were at home.

Richard put both sisters into their saddles with the ease of an old horseman.  “I’ve often regretted selling a certain black beauty named Desperado,” he remarked as he did so, “but never more than at this minute.  My motor there strikes me as disgustingly overadequate to-day.  I can’t keep you company by any speed adjustment in my control, and if I could your steeds wouldn’t stand it.  I’ll let you start down before me and stay here for a bit.  It’s too pleasant a place to leave.  And even then I shall be at home before you—­worse luck!”

“We’re sorry, too,” said Ruth, and Ted agreed, vociferously.  As for Roberta, she let her eyes meet his for a moment in a way so rare with her, whose heavy lashes were forever interfering with any man’s direct gaze, that Richard made the most of his opportunity.  He saw clearly at last that those eyes were of the deepest sea blue, darkened almost to black by the shadowing lashes.  If by some hard chance he should never see them again he knew he could not forget them.

With beat of impatient hoofs upon the hard road the three were off, their chorusing farewells coming back to him over their shoulders.  When they were out of sight he went back to the place on the hilltop where he had stood beside Roberta, and thought it all over.  In that way only could he make shift to prolong the happiness of the hour.

The happiness of the hour!  What had there been about it to make it the happiest hour he could recall?  Such a simple, outdoor encounter!  He had spent many an hour which had lingered in his memory—­hours in places made enchanting to the eye by every device of cunning, in the society of women chosen for their beauty, their wit, their power to allure, to fascinate, to intoxicate.  He had had his senses appealed to by every form of attraction a clever woman can fabricate, herself a miracle of art in dress, in smile, in speech.  He had gone from more than one door with his head swimming, the vivid recollection of the hour just past a drug more potent than the wine that had touched his lips.

His head was not swimming now, thank heaven, though his pulses were unquestionably alive.  It was the exhilaration of healthy, powerful attraction, of which his every capacity for judgment approved.  He had not been drugged by the enchantment which is like wine—­he had been stimulated by the charm which is like the feel of the fresh wind upon the brow.  Here was a girl who did not need the background of artificiality, one who could stand the sunlight on her clear cheek—­and the sunlight on her soul—­he knew that, without knowing how he knew.  It was written in her sweet, strong, spirited face, and it was there for men to read.  No man so blind but he can read a face like that.