“Are you going to marry him?” “No,” she answered. “No?” he almost shouted, this time turning to stare at her. She turned her face away repeating the negative. “Why not?” “I--I--don’t--oh, Jerry, don’t question me this way. It’s not fair.” “But he _has_ asked you?” “Yes.” “And you’ve refused him?” “Yes.” “Why?” “I haven’t got that sort of feeling for him. I admire him. I respect him above all men. I can’t tell you how much he was to me, how I leaned on him, depended on him, but--” She stopped, looking down. Jerry, holding the reins in his loosely gloved hand, leaning toward her, and into her ear whispered: “But you don’t love him.” He turned back to the horse with his face alight with triumph. The relief that she was still his, that love of him had made her refuse such an offer, intoxicated him. He could have sung and shouted. He was silent, however, his eyes on the horse, conscious in every fiber of the proximity of the woman who, he now knew, had not the power to break from his influence. Neither spoke again, till the buggy, cresting the last rise, came out on the shoulder of the mountain, whence the road loops downward through the sage to Washoe Lake. Below them, at the base of the Sierra, the lake lay, a sheet of pure blue, its banks shading from the gray of the surroundings to a vivid green where the water moistened them. There was something human in this evidence of the land’s readiness to bloom and beautify itself when the means were given it. It was a touch of coquetry in this austere, unsmiling landscape that seemed so indifferent. Silent, the man and woman looked down, neither thinking of what they saw. The spirited horse was now willing to rest for a space, and stood, an equine statue against the sky, eagerly sniffing the keen air, his head motionless in a trance of alert attention, his ears pricking back and forth. A gulf of silence encircled them, pin-points of life in an elemental world. June sat with relaxed muscles, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the lake. The stormy, troubled joy, so far from happiness, that was hers when with Jerry, held her. She had no desire to speak or move. The consciousness of his presence was like a drug to her energies, her reason, and her conscience. Sitting beside him, in this sun-steeped, serene solitude, the sense of wrong in his companionship became less and less acute, the wall of reserve between them seemed to evaporate. Sin and virtue, honor and dishonor, seemed the feeble inventions of timid man, oppressed and overwhelmed by this primordial nature which only sympathized with a pagan return to itself. From an absent contemplation of the landscape Jerry turned and looked at his companion. He surveyed her with tender scrutiny, noting points in her appearance he had loved--the slight point with which her upper lip, just in the middle, drooped on her under one, the depression of her dimple, the fineness of her skin.