creature of habit out here. Firio and my little train will grow impatient
waiting for me."

"You mean the Indian and the burro with the silver bells that came over
the pass some time before you?"

Of course they belonged to him, she was thinking, even as she made the
inquiry. This play cowboy, with his absurdly enormous silver spurs, would
naturally put bells on his burro.

"Yes, I sent Firio with Wrath of God and Jag Ear on ahead and told him to
wait at the foot of the descent. Wrath of God will worry--he is of a
worrying nature. I must be going."

In view of the dinosaur nonsense she was already prepared for a variety
of inventional talk from him. As they started down from the pass in
single file, she leading, the sun sank behind the hills, leaving the
Eternal Painter, unhindered by a furnace glare in the centre of the
canvas, to paint with a thousand brushes in the radiant tints of the
afterglow.

"You don't like that one, O art critics!" we hear him saying. "Well, here
is another before you have adjusted your _pince-nez,_ and I will brush it
away before you have emitted your first Ah! I do not criticise. I
paint--I paint for the love of it. I paint with the pigments of the
firmament and the imagination of the universe."

The two did not talk of that sky which held their averted glances, while
knowing hoofs that bore their weight kept the path. For how can you talk
of the desert sky except in the banality of exclamations? It is _lèse