The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila’s face.  She opened her eyes, looked vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up.

“Oh, gracious!” said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again.  “Where the dickens is my hat?  Did it fall out?”

“No, ma’am,” Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion.  “I put it under the seat.”

Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of half a world.

“Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn’t it too wonderful!  How high are we?  Is this the other side?  Oh, no, I can see Millings.  Poor tiny, tiny Millings!  It is small, isn’t it?  How very small it is!  What air!” She shut her eyes, drawing in the perfumed tonic.  The altitude had intoxicated her.  Her heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified.  Every sense seemed to be sharpened.  She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal vividness.

“The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren’t they?” she said.  “What’s that coral-colored bushy one?”

“Indian paint-brush.”

“And that blue one?  It is blue!  I don’t believe I ever knew what blueness meant before.”

“Lupine.  And over yonder’s monkshead.  That other’s larkspur, that poisons cattle in the spring.  On the other side you’ll see a whole lot more—­wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine—­well, say, I learned all them names from a dude I drove over one summer.”

“And such a sky!” said Sheila, lifting her head, “and such big pines!” She lost herself for a minute in the azure immensity above.  A vast mosque of cloud, dome bubbles great and small, stood ahead of them, dwarfing every human experience of height.  “Mr. Thatcher, there isn’t any air up here.  What is it we’re trying to breathe, anyway?”

He smiled patiently, sympathetically, and handed her a tin mug of icy water from the little trickling spring.  The bruise of Hudson’s kiss ached at the cold touch of the water and a shadow fell over her excitement.  She thanked the driver gravely.

“What time is it now?” she asked.

“Past noon.  Better eat your sandwich.”

She took one from its wrapping pensively, but ate it with absent-minded eagerness.  Thatcher’s blue eyes twinkled.

“Seems like I recollect a lady that didn’t want no food to be put in for her.”

“I remember her, too,” said Sheila, between bites, “but very, very vaguely.”

She stood up after a third sandwich, shook crumbs from her skirt, and stretched her arms.  “What a great sleep I’ve had!  Since six o’clock!” She stared down at the lower world.  “I’ve left somebody at Millings.”

“Who’s that?” asked Thatcher, drawling the words a trifle as a Westerner does when he is conscious of a double meaning.

“Me.”

Thatcher laughed.  “You’re a real funny girl, Miss Arundel,” he said.

“Yes, I left one Me when I decided to go into the saloon, and now I’ve left another Me.  I believe people shed their skins like snakes.”