The great stallion that Slone had nearly sacrificed his life to catch was like a thorn in the rider’s flesh.  Slone lay there in the darkness, restless, hot, rolling from side to side, or staring out at the star-studded sky—­miserably unhappy all on account of that horse.  Almost he hated him.  What pride he had felt in Wildfire!  How he had gloried in the gift of the stallion to Lucy!  Then, on the morning of the race had come that unexpected, incomprehensible and wild act of which he had been guilty.  Yet not to save his life, his soul, could he regret it!  Was it he who had been responsible, or an unknown savage within him?  He had kept his word to Lucy, when day after day he had burned with love until that fatal moment when the touch of her, as he lifted her to Wildfire’s saddle, had made a madman out of him.  He had swept her into his arms and held her breast to his, her face before him, and he had kissed the sweet, parting lips till he was blind.

Then he had learned what a little fury she was.  Then he learned how he had fallen, what he had forfeited.  In his amaze at himself, in his humility and shame, he had not been able to say a word in his own defense.  She did not know yet that his act had been ungovernable and that he had not known what he was doing till too late.  And she had finished with:  “I’ll ride Wildfire in the race—­but I won’t have him—­and I won’t have you!  No!”

She had the steel and hardness of her father.

For Slone, the watching of that race was a blend of rapture and despair.  He lived over in mind all the time between the race and this hour when he lay there sleepless and full of remorse.  His mind was like a racecourse with many races; and predominating in it was that swift, strange, stinging race of his memory of Lucy Bostil’s looks and actions.

What an utter fool he was to believe she had meant those tender words when, out there under the looming monuments, she had accepted Wildfire!  She had been an impulsive child.  Her scorn and fury that morning of the race had left nothing for him except footless fancies.  She had mistaken love of Wildfire for love of him.  No, his case was hopeless with Lucy, and if it had not been so Bostil would have made it hopeless.  Yet there were things Slone could not fathom—­the wilful, contradictory, proud and cold and unaccountably sweet looks and actions of the girl.  They haunted Slone.  They made him conscious he had a mind and tortured him with his development.  But he had no experience with girls to compare with what was happening now.  It seemed that accepted fact and remembered scorn and cold certainty were somehow at variance with hitherto unknown intuitions and instincts.  Lucy avoided him, if by chance she encountered him alone.  When Bostil or Aunt Jane or any one else was present Lucy was kind, pleasant, agreeable.  What made her flush red at sight of him and then, pale?  Why did she often at table or in the big living-room