Though she was little impressed by what she could see, she followed.  Now and then an alder brushed against her; once King waited, holding back a green barrier which he had thrust to one side.  The shrubbery thickened; in five minutes she could catch but broken glimpses of the slopes rising to right and left.  Their horses splashed through a deep pool, and King told Gloria to let her animal have his head so that he could pick his way among submerged boulders.  There came a spot where the banks sloped gently again, and here he rode out upon a bit of springy sward, ringed with alder and willow.  As he dismounted Gloria looked uncertainly about her.  Damp underfoot and a paradise for mosquitoes, was her thought.  He caught her look and laughed.

“We get down here and leave the horses,” he informed her.  “They can top off their grain and hay with grass while we dine.  We go only about fifty steps further but we go on foot.”

She came down lightly, again all eager curiosity.  King carrying their provision-bag went ahead breaking aside the shrubbery for Gloria close at his heels.  They ploughed through what looked to her like an impenetrable thicket; they forded the stream where it widened out placidly, stepping on boulders.  Always King went ahead, holding out his hand to her.  Once she slipped, but before her boot had broken the surface of the water his arm was about her.  He caught her up, holding her an instant.  Gloria began to laugh.  Then, as she regarded it, a thoroughly astonishing thing happened; she felt her face flushing, hotter and hotter, until it burned.  She laughed again, a trifle uncertainly, and jumped unaided to the next boulder and across to the pebbly shallows, wading out through six inches of water.

“Little fool!” she chided herself, hot with vexation.  “What in the world did you want to blush like that for?  He will think you are about ten years old.”

For his part King stood stock-still a moment, regarding the water rushing about him.  He had caught her to save her from falling, he had held her for something less than a round second.  And yet something of her pervaded his senses, it had been a second fraught with intimacy, her hair had blown across his face, she had thrilled through him like a sudden burst of music ...  When he jerked his head up and looked at her he could not see her face; she was very busy with a white pebble she had picked up.  He jumped across to land and went on, and the incident sank away into silence.

He was glad to come to what he called the door to the Hidden Place.  He opened it for her; that is, he shoved aside a mass of leaves, holding the branches back with his body.  Gloria went through the opening thus afforded, climbed a long, slanting whitish granite slab, and cried out ecstatically at the beauty of the spot.  Before her was a tiny meadow, as green and smooth as velvet, thick with white and yellow violets.  About it, rimming it in clean lines which did not invade the sward, were