She smiled at him a little vaguely, the mists of sleep clouding her eyes.  It is the unguarded moment, the instant of awakening.  At such an instant the mask falls from before the features of the soul.  I do not know what Bennington saw.

“Mary, Mary!” he cried uncontrolledly, “I love you!  I love you, girl.”

He had never before seen any one so vexed.  She sat up at once.

“Oh, why did you have to say that!” she cried angrily.  “Why did you have to spoil things!  Why couldn’t you have let it go along as it was without bringing that into it!”

She arose and began to walk angrily up and down, kicking aside the sticks and stones as she encountered them.

“I was just beginning to like you, and now you do this. Oh, I am so angry!” She stamped her little foot.  “I thought I had found a man for once who could be a good friend to me, whom I could meet unguardedly, and behold! the third day he tells me this!”

“I am sorry,” stammered Bennington, his new tenderness fleeing, frightened, into the inner recesses of his being.  “I beg your pardon, I didn’t know—­Don’t!  I won’t say it again.  Please!”

The declaration had been manly.  This was ridiculously boyish.  The girl frowned at him in two minds as to what to do.

“Really, truly,” he assured her.

She laughed a little, scornfully.  “Very well, I’ll give you one more chance.  I like you too well to drop you entirely.” (What an air of autocracy she took, to be sure!) “You mustn’t speak of that again.  And you must forget it entirely.”  She lowered at him, a delicious picture of wrath.

They saddled the horses and took their way homeward in silence.  The tenderness put out its flower head from the inner sanctuary.  Apparently the coast was clear.  It ventured a little further.  The evening was very shadowy and sweet and musical with birds.  The tenderness boldly invaded Bennington’s eyes, and spoke, oh, so timidly, from his lips.

“I will do just as you say,” it hesitated, “and I’ll be very, very good indeed.  But am I to have no hope at all?”

“Why can’t you keep off that standpoint entirely?”

“Just that one question; then I will.”

“Well,” grudgingly, “I suppose nothing on earth could keep the average mortal from hoping; but I can’t answer that there is any ground for it.”

“When can I speak of it again?”

“I don’t know—­after the Pioneer’s Picnic.”

“That is when you cease to be a mystery, isn’t it?”

She sighed.  “That is when I become a greater mystery—­even to myself, I fear,” she added in a murmur too low for him to catch.

They rode on in silence for a little space more.  The night shadows were flowing down between the trees like vapour.  The girl of her own accord returned to the subject.