down to the lake.

Then, getting his first near view of her, his eyes widened. He had never
seen anything just like her; with that he began realizing dully that he
was straying into strange pastures. He took her two hands because there
was nothing else to do, feeling just a trifle awkward in the
unaccustomed act. He looked down into Gloria's face, which was lifted so
artlessly up to his. Hers were the softest, tenderest grey eyes he had
ever looked into. He had the uneasy fear that his hard rough hands were
rasping the fine soft skin of hers. Yet there was a warm pleasurable
thrill in the contact. Gloria was very much alive and warm-bodied and
beautiful. She was like those flowers which King knew so well, fragrant
dainty blossoms which lift their little faces from the highest of the
old mountains into the rarest of skies, growths seeming to partake of
some celestial perfection; hardy, though they clothed themselves in an
outward seeming of fragile delicacy. _Physically_--he emphasized the
word and barricaded himself behind it as though he were on the defence
against her!--she came nearer perfection than he had thought a girl
could come, and nowhere did he find a conflicting detail from the
tendril of sunny brown hair touching the curve of the sweet young face
to the little feet in their clicking high-heeled shoes. Thus from the
beginning he thought of her in superlatives. And thus did Gloria, like
the springtime coquetting with an aloof and silent wilderness, make her
bright entry into Mark King's life.

"I have been acting-up like a Comanche Indian outside," laughed Gloria.
It was she who withdrew her hands; King started inwardly, wondering how
long he had been holding them, how long he would have held them if she
had not been so serenely mistress of the moment. "My hair was all
tumbling down and I had to run upstairs to fight it back where it