valley! I beg of you, go back over the pass!"

There was no acting, no suspicion of a gesture. She stood quite still,
while all the power of her eyes reflected the misery which she pictured
for herself. The low pitch of her voice sounded its depths with that
restraint which makes for the most poignant intensity. As she reached her
climax he had come out of his languid pose. He was erect and rigid. She
saw him as some person other than the one to whom she had begun her
appeal. He was still smiling, but his smile was of a different sort.
Instead of being the significant thing about him in expression of his
casualness, it seemed the softening compensation for his stubbornness.

"I'd like to, but it is hardly in human nature for me to do that. I
can't!" And he asked if he might bring up her pony.

"Yes," she consented.

She thought that the faint bow of courtesy with which he had accompanied
the announcement of his decision he would have given, in common
politeness, to anyone who pointed at the danger sign before he rode over
the precipice.

"May I ride down with you, or shall I go ahead?" he inquired, after he
had assisted her to mount.

"With me!" she answered, quickly. "You are safe while you are with me."

The decisive turn to her mobile lips and the faint wrinkles of a frown,
coming and going in various heraldry, formed a vividly sentient and
versatile expression of emotions while she watched his silhouette against