But her smile was wan; she felt as if the universe moved beneath her feet; as yet the moment was delayed when her wounded heart would refuse to submit, and her whole passionate, sensuous nature rise up to battle for life and love. VIII ROSE let the bridle lie loosely on her horse’s neck as they halted at the elbow of the path. Rock Creek, leaping over its gray boulders and flowing between them with little swirls of foam, comes rushing madly past, slips under the trailing branches of a weeping birch and suddenly widening, hushes its tumult and drops placidly below the ford, where, in summer, in a wide shallow basin, the swan and the little white ducks lie. The scene was wild; the untouched forest rose behind them, its bare gray limbs against the sky, the black green of an occasional spruce or cedar breaking the monotony above the brown-leafed earth and closing the long vistas of stripped tree trunks which stand on the shoulder of the hill in serried ranks in the teeth of the north wind, like soldiers, with their faces to the foe. Below, the stream gurgled and murmured; on the farther bank the dense growth of young maples showed here and there a scarlet bud. The air was sweet, redolent with fresh pine and the promise of the spring; overhead the crows were flying by twos and tens and twenties, lost at last in the soft blue distance. Fox, who was riding with Rose, dismounted and turning back the dead leaves on a sunny slope found a single spray of arbutus. She uttered a little exclamation of pleasure, holding out her hand. He laughed. “When I was a boy I always found the first wild flowers,” he said; “I knew just where the blood-root grew and the anemone. Since then I’ve been making speeches at the primaries and getting votes for my party. There’s no comparison between the two pursuits!” She had the arbutus in her hand and gave him a challenging glance; she began to understand him better, but her convictions were too strong to be subdued. “You mean that you’ve given up your life for politics, just to be a part of a machine?” He assented, still smiling as he remounted, and the horses moved on at a walk. “I can’t see why you think it noble to be merely a politician,” she persisted. “Am I?” his amused eyes met hers. “Yes!” she retorted, “a statesman is above his party, before it; he guides, moves, sways it. You like to call yourself part of a machine! You don’t vote against a bill which concerns the party--that’s being a politician!” “But I can’t betray my party,” he objected, unmoved. “You should be independent of it.” “You can’t judge,” he argued, with his teasing laugh, “your coat is of another color.” “Well, at least it isn’t Joseph’s!” she exclaimed vexed. “You think I can’t be trusted?” He pursued the subject with a boyish enjoyment of her red cheek and kindling eye. “I didn’t mean that--of course party men can be honest, but I don’t call it the highest honesty to vote against your own convictions for any party.”