He paddled all day, and at night cut down a tree so that it would fall in the water, and tied his canoe to it, that he might not be blown ashore while he slept.

For hours he lay waiting for sleep, watching the stars circle round his head as his canoe was swung in the eddies, and considering his situation.

He could not rest for his eagerness to be at the end of his journey, though he had no hope of what awaited there—­that is to say not much hope; there is always a perhaps.

But how could Colina relent when she beheld him arriving laden with ammunition to make war upon her?  Ambrose wondered sadly if any lover before him ever found himself in such a plight.

By ten o’clock next morning he was within a mile or two of Grampierre’s place.  The river was dazzling in the morning sunlight, the air like wine.

The poplar trees had put on their gorgeous autumn dress of saffron and scarlet, which showed like names against the chocolate colored hills.  Suddenly in a grassy ravine on his right, Ambrose saw the “yellow” horse feeding.

His heart set up a furious beating.  No power on earth could have prevented him from landing, though common sense told him clearly no good could come of it.  That “perhaps” drew him ashore, that hope against hope.

After a short search he found her sleeping under a poplar-tree in a hollow of the bank that was hidden from the river.

She wore her khaki riding-habit, as usual; her head was couched in the crook of her arm, and in the other hand she held her Stetson hat by its strap.  Ambrose brooded over her wistfully.

Her face was paler and thinner; evidently she herself had not been having too easy a time these two months past.

These blemishes on her beauty made her seem infinitely more beautiful and dearer to him.  And all relaxed and disarmed in sleep as she was, it seemed so easy a thing to gather her up in his arms and make her forget what divided them.

Ambrose’s dim thought was:  “If somehow I could only send her real self a message while her head-strong, unreasonable self is asleep, maybe she’d confess the truth when she woke.”

While he was hungrily gazing at her her eyelids fluttered.  He moved back to a more respectful distance.  She awoke without alarm.  For an instant she lay looking at him as calmly as a babe in its crib.

Then in a flash recollection returned, and she sprang to a sitting position, both hands, womanlike, flying to her hair.  She eyed him with a certain discomposure.  It was as if she felt that she ought to be furiously angry, and was somewhat dismayed because it did not come.

“What do you want?” she asked coldly.

In her cold eye Ambrose was conscious of a wall between them more impenetrable than granite.  His heart gave up hope.  “Nothing,” he said sullenly.

“It’s not exactly agreeable,” she said, frowning, “to find oneself spied upon.”