Her beautiful eyes glanced quickly off, like a sunbeam from a single eyeglass. She turned, as if in sudden decision, and sped like an arrow over the high moor. May’s eyes followed her; and his soul was in his eyes, and his body went after the soul. One dig of the spurs nigh unseated him, as if his spirited horse scorned such an incitement to chivalric duty; and so, for some twenty minutes on end they rode, May neither gaining nor losing, and both out of sight of the rest of the hunt. Now and then the cry of hounds came up from the forest-valley on the right, and May fancied he heard below a crashing as of bushes; but he had faith in his guiding goddess and he took her lead. The high winds whistled by his head, and there were blue glimpses of the sea and wide gray gleams of misty moorland; but the soft heather made no sound of their mad gallop, and May was conscious of nothing else save the noble horse before him and the flutter of the lady’s riding-habit in the wind. Now the earth that rushed beneath was yellow with the gorse, now purple with the heather; here, he would sail over a turf-bank, there, his horse would swerve furiously from the feeling of an Exmoor bog; where she would ride, he would ride. This he swore to himself; but she rode straight, and he could make no gain. At the top of the moor, almost on the ridge of Dunkery Beacon, was a narrow cart-path, fenced six feet high in ferny turf, after the usual manner of Devonshire lanes. May saw it and exulted; this was sure to turn her, till she found a gate at least. But his beautiful chase rode up the gentle inner incline and sailing over the lane like a bird, was lost to sight upon the other side. “By heavens!” swore May to himself. “She means to kill herself.” He rode at it and cleared the six-foot width of lane successfully; but his horse could not bunch his legs upon the narrow bank beyond. He rolled down it, and May over his head into a bank of heather. The eager American prematurely began to swear before his head struck the ground; and before his one moderate oath was finished, he was upon his horse and off again. Mrs. Dehon had not even turned round upon his disaster; but May was none the less attracted to her by that. What was mortal mishap to a spirit wrecked like hers? Why should she? They were riding down hill now; and she was riding a little more carefully, favoring her horse. But May cared neither for his horse nor his neck by this time. Straight down the hill he rode; and by the time they reached the Lynn he had gained the quarter-mile he lost. Here she had pulled up her horse, and he pulled up his at a courteous distance; and both sat still there, in the quiet valley; and the noise of their horses’ breathing was louder than the rustle of the wind in the old ash-trees around them.