But Gloria did not say to him:  “Mark King, I am determined that you shall adore me, pretty face, pretty figure, pretty ways and all.”  Nor yet to herself did she put things so baldly.  She did, however, yield herself luxuriously to the springtime, the romance of the hour, the appeal of her latest cavalier, and preen herself like a mating bird.  King saw, admired, and in his own fashion played his own part.  It was not clear to him that there had been a new pleasure in his own strength when he had lifted her into her saddle, and yet her little breathless laugh had rung musically in his ears.  Had a man arisen to announce, jibingly, that Mark King was “showing off” before a girl like a boy of ten, though within bounds, he would have called the man a liar and forthwith have kicked him out of the landscape ...  They rode on, side by side, each content with seeing only that which lay on the surface—­both of his companion and of himself.  In a word, they were living life naturally, without demanding of the great theatrical manager to know exactly what parts they were to play in the human comedy.  Externals sufficed just now; the fragrant still forests, the pulse-stirring sunshine, the warm, fruitful earth below and the blue sky above.

From the first he called her Gloria quite naturally; to her he was Mr. King.  But the “Mark” slipped out before they came into sight of the roofs of picturesque Coloma.

Chapter VI

“You are sure you won’t be gone more than an hour?” Gloria asked.

Never, it seemed to her, had she seen a lonelier-looking place than old Coloma drowsing on the fringe of the wilderness.  The street into which they had ridden was deserted save for a couple of dogs making each other’s acquaintance suspiciously.  Why was it more lonesome here than it had been back there in the mountains? she wondered.

“Less than an hour,” he assured her.  “What business I have can be done in fifteen minutes if it can be done at all.  But, in the meantime, what will you do?”

“Oh,” said Gloria, “I’ll just poke around.  It will be fun to see what kind of people live here.”

He put the horses in the stable, watered and fed them himself, and came back to her outside the front double doors.  She had dropped down on a box in the sun; he thought that there was a little droop to her shoulders.  And small wonder, he admitted, with a tardy sense of guilt.  All these hours in the saddle——­

“Tired much?” he asked solicitously.

The shoulders straightened like a soldier’s; she jumped up and whirled smilingly.

“Not a bit tired,” she told him brightly.

“That’s good.  But I could get a room for you at the hotel; you could lie down and rest a couple of hours——­”