And what had he done to Reynardine? It was n't his fault. It was hers. She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not. Was it his fault that a woman was fickle? Yes, she was in love with him. He could even yet see her dark murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time clavichord. "Sun and dark I followed her, Her eyes did brightly shine: She took me o'er the mountains, Did my sweet Reynardine. If by chance you look for me Perhaps you'll not me find--" Oh, damn! What did she ever come into his life for, anyway! She didn't want a man. She wanted a poet. Crazy! That's what she was, crazy as a coot. He supposed her daughter--their daughter--was as crazy as she! First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting. She never said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he saddled up for the Lonth. She had expected him, he laughed, to have the same crazy notions as her family. And her face had been drawn with pain when he came back in the evening. And she had said nothing. Too proud. Too damn crazy and too proud! That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"--not that he liked the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs. But he just thought it might please her to have him ask. She shook her head, and plunged into Chopin. "I don't think I could play--'Reynardine'--to-night," she said. And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again. She and her folk had such darn queer notions. They thought more of a horse under them than themselves. They went to infinite pains and immense time to train a green horse or break in a dog where another person with a flick of spurs or, a crack of the whip could do it in half the time. True, they did it well. But, after all, you did n't make human friendships with animals. You made them do what you wanted to; or if they did n't-- That was a man's way. But people are queer, some of them. One man is proud that his horse whinnies in the stall when he hears the beloved footstep. And some men give friendship to dogs they never give to women, and their hearts break when a hound dies. And to some folk the birds of the air will come and eat out of their hand, so confident are the birds. And the death of a rabbit is a great tragedy to children. There is a virgin glade in nearly all folks' hearts where neither blood nor marriage wander, but the love of animals possesses. It is some mystic link in the chain of creation.