Colina was furious.  He made her feel like a little girl.  She bit her lips to keep in the undignified answer that sprang to them.  Inside her she said it:  “Smarty!  I shall laugh when he leads you a chase!” She sat down in the grass under a poplar-tree, prepared to enjoy the circus from afar.

There was none.  Ginger having tired of his waywardness, perhaps, or having eaten his fill, quietly allowed himself to be taken.  The young man came riding back on him.  Colina could almost have wept with mortification.

He slipped out of the saddle beside her and stood waiting for her to mount.  There was no consciousness of triumph in his manner.

His eyes flew back to hers with the same extraordinarily naive glance.  When Colina frowned under it he literally dragged them away, but in spite of him they soon returned.

Many a man’s eyes had been offered to Colina, but never a pair that glowed with a fire like this.  They were at the same time bold and humble.  They contained an imploring appeal without any sacrifice of self-respect.  They disturbed Colina to such a degree she scarcely knew what she was doing.

He offered her a hand to mount, and she drew back with an offended air.  He instantly yielded, and she mounted unaided—­mounted awkwardly, and bit her lip again.

He did not immediately loose her rein.  Out of the corner of her eye Colina saw that he was breathing fast.

“It will he late before you get home,” he said.  His voice was very low—­she could feel the effort he was making not to let it shake.  “Will you—­will you eat with me?”

The modest tendering of this bold invitation disarmed Colina.  She hesitated.  He went on with a touch of boyish eagerness:  “There’s only a traveler’s grub, of course.  I got a fish on a night-line this morning.  Also there’s a prairie chicken roasted yesterday.”

A self-deceiving argument ran through Colina’s brain like quick-silver:  “If I go, I shall be tormented by the feeling that he got the best of me; if I stay a while I can put him in his place!”

She dismounted.  The young man turned abruptly to tie Ginger to the poplar-tree, but even in the boundary of his cheek Colina read his beaming happiness.

With scarcely another glance at her he plunged down the bank and set to work over his fire.  Colina sedately followed and seated herself on a boulder to wait until she should be served.

Now that he no longer looked at her, Colina could not help watching him.  A dangerous softness began to work in her breast; he was so boyish, so clumsy, so anxious to entertain her fittingly—­his unconsciousness of her nearness was such a transparent assumption.

Colina was alarmed by her own weakness.  She looked resolutely at the dog.

He was a mongrel black and tan, bigger than a terrier, and he had a ridiculous curly tail.  He had received her with an insulting air of indifference.