of the world and of the world’s primitive savagery.  And yet it did not repel; it fascinated and its message had the seeming of an old, oft-told, and half-forgotten tale.  It threatened with its spires as cruel as bared fangs, and yet it beckoned and invited with its blue distances.  Always, since the first man fashioned the first club and made him a knife of a jagged flint, has mankind battled with the great mother, the earth who bore him.  He has striven with her for his food, warred with her for his raiment, entrenched himself against the merciless attack of the seasons, winter to stab him with icy spear, summer to consume him.  And always has he loved her and honoured her, since she is his great mother.  Gloria, her thoughts confused by conflicting instincts, inspired and awed, drew closer to King.

“—­But to be out here alone!” The utter, utter loneliness of it.  She looked at him with new, curious eyes.  “Doesn’t it bear down on you; don’t you feel at times that the loneliness——­”

He understood.

“I am used to it, you know.  I have never known what it was out here to feel lonely until——­”

She waited for him to finish, her eyes on his.  Until——?

“Until after our first ride together,” he said.

Again she understood.  And now she looked away hastily and her cheeks reddened.  He was about to tell her that he loved her; his eyes had told her; his lips were shaping to the words “I love you!” And she was suddenly conscious of a wild nutter in her heart; she was trembling as though terrified.  Other men had told her “I love you.”  Many times and in many ways—­smiling, with a laugh, with a sigh—­whispering the words or saying them half sternly.  And she had always been gay and ready; a little thrilled, perhaps, as by a chance strain of music.  But now—­she could hardly breathe.  Now she was frightened.  She did not know why; she could not understand the sense of it; she only knew that she was afraid.  Of what?  Nor did she know that.  She only knew that here were Gloria Gaynor and Mark King, man and girl—­man and woman—­set apart from the world, lifted above it, clear-cut figures upon a pinnacle piercing the infinite blue of the heavens, and that a mystery was unfolding before them.  She had a wild wish to stop the flight of time, to thrust it back upon itself, to have the present not the present but to avoid the Now by racing back into the serenity of Just A Little While Ago.  Ten minutes ago—­anything but this electric, terrifying moment when Mark King, a surge of emotion upon him, was about to say:  “I love you.”

“Look!” Gloria started and, forgetful of the strange conflict of emotions within her, clutched at his sleeve.  “A man—­here;——­”

“Swen Brodie!” muttered King angrily.