"
She slipped from her horse and jerked the reins over its head. In
another moment she had untied the cinch and drawn off the saddle. She
held its weight easily on one forearm. Actions, after all, are more
eloquent than words.
"I suppose," he said gloomily, "that if I'd asked you to stay you'd have
ridden off at once?"
She did not answer for a moment, and he strained his eyes to read her
expression through the dark. At length she laughed with a new note in
her voice that drew her strangely close to him. During the long ride he
had come to feel toward her as toward another man, as strong as himself,
almost, as fine a horseman, and much surer of herself on that wild
trail; but now the laughter in an instant rubbed all this away. It was
rather low, and with a throaty quality of richness. The pulse of the
sound was like a light finger tapping some marvellously sensitive chord
within him.
"D'you think that?" she said, and went directly through the door of the
house.
He heard the crazy floor creak beneath her weight; the saddle dropped
with a thump; a match scratched and a flight of shadows shook across the
doorway.
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