better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part.”  No, there was no escape, no possible avenue that remained unguarded.  The knowledge overwhelmed her, suffocated her.  Vague possibilities, recently born, became realities.  Closer and closer gripped the solitude.  For the first time in her existence the dead surrounding silence became unbearable.  Almost desperately she shifted back in her seat.  Instinctively she sought the hand of her companion, pressed it tight.  A mist came into her eyes, until the very team itself was blotted out.

“Oh, How,” she confessed tensely, “I’m afraid!”

The man roused, as one recalled from reverie, as one awakened but not yet completely returned.

“Afraid, Bess?  Afraid of what?”

“Of the silence, of the future; of you, a bit.”

“Afraid of me, Bess?” Perplexed, wondering, the man held the team to a walk and simultaneously the side curtains ceased flapping, hung close.  “I don’t think I understand.  Tell me why, Bess.”

“I can’t.  A child doesn’t know why it’s afraid of the dark.  The dark has never hurt it.  It merely is.”

At her side the man sat looking at her.  He did not touch her, he did not move.  In the time since they had come into his own a wonderful change had come into the face of this Indian man; and never was it so wonderful as at this moment.  He still wore the grotesque ready-made clothes.  The high collar, galling to him as a bridle to an unbroken cayuse, had made a red circle about his throat; yet of it and of them he was oblivious.  Very, very young he looked at this time; fairly boyish.  There was a colour in his beardless cheeks higher than the bronze of his race.  The black eyes were soft as a child’s, trusting as a child’s.  In the career of every human being there comes a time supreme, a climax, a period of exaltation to which memory will ever after recur, which serves as a standard of happiness absolute; and in the career of How Landor the hour had struck.  This he knew; and yet, knowing, he could scarcely credit the truth.  His cup of happiness was full, full to overflowing; yet he was almost afraid to put it to his lips for fear it would vanish, lest it should prove a myth.

Thus he sat there, this Indian man with whom fate was jesting, worshipping with a faith and love more intense than a Christian for his God; yet, with instinctive reticence, worshipping with closed lips.  Thus the minutes passed; minutes of silence wherein he should have been eloquent, minutes that held an opportunity that would never be his again.  Smiling, ironic, fate the satirist looked on at her handiwork, watched to the end; and then, observing that finale, laughed—­and with the voice of Elizabeth Landor.

“Don’t work at it any more, How,” derided destiny.  “You don’t understand, and I can’t tell you.”