her hand was thrown out in a gesture of pain.

"Oh, see-see!" she cried. "His leg is broken." She loved animals far
more than human beings. There were good reasons for it. She had fared
hard in life at the hands of men and women, because the only ones with
whom, in her seclusion, she had had to do, had sacrificed her, all save
one-the man beside her. Animal life had something in it akin to her own
voiceless being. Her spirit had never been vocal until Orlando came.

"Oh, how wicked I've been!" she cried. . . . "I couldn't bear it any
longer. He wouldn't let me ride alone, go anywhere alone. I had to do
it. I'd never ridden this horse before. My own mare wasn't fit.

"See-see. It's my ankle that ought to be broken, not his."

Orlando got to his feet. "Look the other way," he said. "Turn round,
please. I'll put him out of pain. He bolted with you, and he'd have
killed you, if he could; but that doesn't matter. He can't be saved.
Turn round, don't look this way."

She had been commanded to do things all her life, first by her mother,
tyrant-hearted and selfish, and then by her husband, an overlord, with a
savage soul; and she had obeyed always, because she always seemed to be
in the grasp of something against which no pressure could avail. She was
being commanded now, but there was that in the voice which, while
commanding her, made her long to do as she was bid. It was an obedience
filled with passion, resigning itself to the will of a force which was
all gentleness, but oh, so compelling!

She buried her face in her hands, and presently Orlando had opened a vein