Madeline, not knowing what to expect, had not time for any feeling but amaze.  A quick glance showed her Stewart in rough garb, dressed for the trail, and leading a wiry horse, saddled and packed.  When Stewart, without looking at her, put his arm around Majesty’s neck and laid his face against the flowing mane Madeline’s heart suddenly began to beat with unwonted quickness.  Stewart seemed oblivious to her presence.  His eyes were closed.  His dark face softened, lost its hardness and fierceness and sadness, and for an instant became beautiful.

Madeline instantly divined what his action meant.  He was leaving the ranch; this was his good-by to his horse.  How strange, sad, fine was this love between man and beast!  A dimness confused Madeline’s eyes; she hurriedly brushed it away, and it came back wet and blurring.  She averted her face, ashamed of the tears Stewart might see.  She was sorry for him.  He was going away, and this time, judging from the nature of his farewell to his horse, it was to be forever.  Like a stab from a cold blade a pain shot through Madeline’s heart.  The wonder of it, the incomprehensibility of it, the utter newness and strangeness of this sharp pain that now left behind a dull pang, made her forget Stewart, her surroundings, everything except to search her heart.  Maybe here was the secret that had eluded her.  She trembled on the brink of something unknown.  In some strange way the emotion brought back her girlhood.  Her mind revolved swift queries and replies; she was living, feeling, learning; happiness mocked at her from behind a barred door, and the bar of that door seemed to be an inexplicable pain.  Then like lightning strokes shot the questions:  Why should pain hide her happiness?  What was her happiness?  What relation had it to this man?  Why should she feel strangely about his departure?  And the voices within her were silenced, stunned, unanswered.

“I want to talk to you,” said Stewart.

Madeline started, turned to him, and now she saw the earlier Stewart, the man who reminded her of their first meeting at El Cajon, of that memorable meeting at Chiricahua.

“I want to ask you something,” he went on.  “I’ve been wanting to know something.  That’s why I’ve hung on here.  You never spoke to me, never noticed me, never gave me a chance to ask you.  But now I’m going over—­over the border.  And I want to know.  Why did you refuse to listen to me?”

At his last words that hot shame, tenfold more stifling than when it had before humiliated Madeline, rushed over her, sending the scarlet in a wave to her temples.  It seemed that his words made her realize she was actually face to face with him, that somehow a shame she would rather have died than revealed was being liberated.  Biting her lips to hold back speech, she jerked on Majesty’s bridle, struck him with her whip, spurred him.  Stewart’s iron arm held the horse.  Then Madeline, in a flash of passion, struck at Stewart’s face, missed it, struck again, and hit.  With one pull, almost drawing her from the saddle, he tore the whip from her hands.  It was not that action on his part, or the sudden strong masterfulness of his look, so much as the livid mark on his face where the whip had lashed that quieted, if it did not check, her fury.