She looks prettier than ever, he thought, if less rounded than of yore, and if he had expressed sorrow at causing her so much pain, Gay's tender heart would instantly have melted, but for all his delight at seeing her, his evident determination to treat his accident as a trifle not worth talking about, put her back up to begin with. And when he unblushingly asked her to condole with him on the number of good things he had missed, and roundly abused the Professor and his understudy, for refusing him permission to ride with an arm strapped to his side, Gay's patience gave way utterly, and the first little rift within the lute made itself known. Poor Chris felt that coldness in the air, but had not the key to the puzzle, and he could not make Gay out. Instead of the jolly little girl, eager to hear all about his stable, to discuss his horses, his hopes and future chances, to buck him up as she had so often done when things went wrong, she did not seem to have a word to throw to him except about trivial matters that didn't in the least interest him--or her, formerly. How could he tell that those moments in which she saw his colours closed in by a mêlée of struggling horses and men, had changed her from a careless, happy-go-lucky girl, who laughed at accidents, had scarcely flung a fear even to death, to a thoughtful woman whose outlook on life would never again be quite the same? In a word, what he did before had not mattered, but now that she knew she loved him, it _did_, yet this solution never occurred to him, nor was there anything in her manner to suggest it--quite the reverse, in fact. He asked her a few questions about her horses, and what they had done lately, as the papers did not always chronicle their doings, and she told him of their failures and successes, quite without enthusiasm, and Chris came to the conclusion that experience and Rensslaer combined, had put her off Trotting. And if she did not tell him that her horses were entered for no more fixtures after the end of June, and that her brief connection with Trotting would altogether cease on her return from abroad, Chris saw, clearly enough, that she took no more interest in the sport into which she had so light-heartedly plunged, than she did in his. If hitherto Gay's life had been regulated by a warm heart, high spirits, and quick wits, he knew that it was so no longer, and resented the change in her. Sunbeams might not fulfil any recognised place in the scheme of creation, but they were delightful all the same, and he had been quite satisfied with her as she was. If he had only known it, she loved him at that moment more than ever, realising now she was with him, how completely he had spoiled her for everyone else, that he was the one companion of whom she never tired, never could tire.