"Certainly you never watched me when I did know," she retorted.
"I should think not!" He laughed uneasily. "But you see the sadness there. I tried to locate it, but I couldn't. I only knew it was there because I found it in the sketches when they were done. I think I caught the figure pretty well in that one. Stand that way now, won't you?"
She rose graciously.
"Here's your quirt, and catch your skirts the way you've done there—that's it. Yes, I got that long line down from the shoulder. It's a fine line. You are beautiful," he continued critically. "I like the way your neck goes up from your shoulders, and your head has a perky kind of a tilt, as if you wouldn't be easy to bluff."
She smiled, meditating some jocose retort, but he still surveyed her impersonally, not seeing the smile. She dropped to the couch rather quickly.
"Let us talk about you," she urged. But he did not hear.
"Your face, though—that's the fine thing—" He was scanning it with narrowed eyes. But a protesting movement of hers restored him to his normal embarrassment. He writhed in uncomfortable apology before her. "I'd 'most forgot you were really here," he explained. "I've seen you that way so often when you weren't here. There now—I see that sadness; it's in the upper lip. It showed even when you laughed then."
"Really, this must stop," she broke in. "People don't talk this way."
"Don't they? Why don't they? I'm sorry—but all that interested me." The wave of his hand indicated the fluent grace of the lady impartially from head to foot.
"Of course," he added, "I knew there must be people like you, out there, but I never dreamed I'd have one of them close enough to look at—let alone get friendly with. I hope you won't hold it against me."
CHAPTER IV
A PORTRAIT
THOUGH she had made him tingle with an impulse to flee from her, he was at the edge of the east bench early the next afternoon. He might see her from a distance. If she came close upon him—well, it was worth risking; he had a good horse. Her eyes were the best of her he thought, big gray things under black brows, with a dark ring, well defined, about the iris. He had seen no such eyes before. And how they lighted her face when she spoke. Her face needed lighting, he thought. It was pale under the dark hair—her hair stopped short of being black, and was lusterless—with only a bit of scared pink in her cheeks, after that ride of the day before. He thought of her hands, too. They were the right hands for her, long, slender, and strong, he did not doubt, under a tricky look of being delicate. It was not possible that they could ever talk together again so easily. He could not make that seem true, but he could look at her. He had hoped she would promise to come again, but they had parted abruptly the afternoon before. Riding back with her, as they breasted the last slope leading to the ranch, he had rejoiced boldly at the chance that had led her up the lake trail that morning. Then Beulah Pierce had hailed them from his station at the bars, hailed them in a voice built to admirable carrying power by many cattle drives. His speech began, "Didn't I tell you where that upper trail would——"
Whereupon the lady turned to dismiss her escort rather curtly.
"Thank you for riding back with me. I shall not trouble you any further." And he, staring suddenly at her with the wild deer's eyes again, had fled over the back trail.
He thought if there had been more time she might have said, "I will come again soon—perhaps to-morrow." He liked to think she might have said that, but he could not give it much reality.
He sprawled easily in the saddle, leaning his crossed arms on the pommel and gazing out over the sun-shot valley to the group of buildings and corrals at Bar-7. At least she rode somewhere every afternoon, and he would see her leave. If she turned down the valley road or up the cañon—well, that emergency could be met. He thought of speeches to make it plain that he had not followed her, daring to approach her in his mind, but knowing well that he would probably hide at sight of her.
A half hour he waited so, beholding visions of their accidental meeting. Then his pulses raced. He saw the stocky-barreled Cooney led from the corral to the front of the house by Red Phinney. He could almost discern the Sabbath finery of Red across that crystal mile—for this was the breathing day of the week, when faces were rasped cruelly by indifferent razors, and fine raiment was donned, black trousers and gay, clean shirts and neckerchiefs of flaming silk.
He could not see her mount. The ranch house hid that spectacle. But she rode into view presently, putting Cooney first to his little fox trot and then to a lope, as the road wound among the willows.
He straightened in the saddle as she reached the creek. He was eager to retreat, yet feared to have his cowardice detected. And when Cooney halted midway of the stream, pawing its rocky bed and making a pretense of thirst, the woman looked up and saw her watcher on the trail. She waved the gauntleted hand that held her quirt, and he found himself holding his hat in his hand with an affectation of ease. Then each laughed, and, though neither could hear the other, it was as if they had laughed together in some little flurry of understanding. He could still pretend to have happened there at that moment, he reflected. And this brought him courage as he saw her give Cooney his way where the trail branched. When the little horse had carried her to the summit and stood in panting gratitude, the waiting youth evolved a splendid plan for hiding his fright. He dismounted and forced himself to go coolly and take her hand. Perhaps it was as well that he had not trusted himself to remain in the saddle at that first moment. But when the thing was really over he no longer made a secret of his delight at her coming. His first anxious look at her face had shown him the cordial friendliness of the preceding day. She was amused by him, he could see that, and did not resent it; but she was kind, and in his joy at this he babbled, at first, with little coherence.
"I rode right over here to make sure I would see you," he began, "and then if you rode down the valley, or up, I was going to loaf along and find you by accident, and pretend I was hunting a colt. I was going to be afraid the mountain lions had got it." He laughed immoderately at this joke. "And while I waited for you I kept trying to think how fine it would have sounded last night if you had said, 'I think I shall go over and look at your place again to-morrow.' I couldn't make your voice sound true, though. It's a good thing we needn't try to paint voices."
They were riding together over the first stretch of meadow. It seemed to have been agreed without words that they should ride to the lake cabin.
"To paint voices?" she queried.
"Voices, yes; how could yours be painted? It couldn't. You'll see that. I thought of a jumble of things—wine and velvet, for instance; some kind of rich, golden wine and purple velvet, and then, warm flickers of light in a darkened room, and a big bronze bell struck with something soft that would muffle it and yet make everything about it tremble. You see, don't you?" he concluded with a questioning look of deep seriousness.
His own voice was low and eager, with its undernote of wistfulness. Already he had renewed upon her that companionable charm which she had felt the day before, a charm compounded of half-shy directness, of flashes of self-forgetfulness, of quick-trusting comradeship. She rejected a cant phrase of humorous disclaimer that habit brought to her lips. It would puzzle or affront his forthrightness.
"Very well, we'll agree that my voice can't be painted," she said at last. "So let us talk of you."
"I guess I should like that pretty well," he answered after a moment's pondering. "I don't believe I've ever talked much; but now I feel as if I could tire you out, talking as we did yesterday. Queer, wasn't it?"
He fell silent, however, when the trail narrowed to climb the long ridge, as if the acknowledgment of his desire to speak had somehow quenched it. She fell in ahead, half turning in her saddle to address him from time to time, but he would talk only about things of the moment. In a marshy spot