“I don’t care if I did cheat,” Mary consoled herself as she sought her bed early that night. “They’ll never guess that neither match was broken. Andy had no chance to win--and I wanted it that way.” But at the same time that she was saying this Dr. Shonto sat alone over the red coals of the dying campfire. Charmian and Andy were strolling down the cañon together under the light of the moon, and the girl did not protest when Andy’s arm stole round her waist. CHAPTER XV VAGRANCY CAÑON “CHARMIAN,” said Andy passionately, “do you know that I love you more than anything else in all the world? I can’t live without you, darling! Don’t want to live without you! You know I love you, don’t you, dear? Tell me you know it! You must know it! You can’t help but know! I’ve loved you from the moment I first set eyes on you, when you stood in the door in your evening gown at El Trono de Tolerancia. God, how I love you, Charmian!” He stopped her, made her face him, and threw his other arm about her. He was trembling violently, and in the moonlight she saw the twitching of his parted lips. “Charmian! Charmian!” he cried brokenly, as he realized that she was not struggling in his arms. “You love me, don’t you? I know you love me! God!” He tightened his hold on her, drew her close to his breast, kissed her dark hair, then savagely threw her body sidewise and found her lips with his. She was shaken--swept away. He was so young, so handsome, so strong, so intensely masculine. Every primitive instinct of her being went out to him. She could no more escape the passionate appeal of the male in him than can the innocent, nature-ruled females of the wilderness escape at mating time. She had no desire to escape. They were man and woman, alone under the stars and the moon, in a deep, grim cañon that scarred the heart of this wild region; and all the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of our false and hectic civilization were far away. A man and a woman, alone and aloof as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, young, courageous, ripe for love. “Male and female created he them.” She gave him her warm, firm lips. He kissed her lips and eyes and her dusky throat, while the blood hammered in his veins as if freshets of old port wine were rushing through them. They spoke a thousand words that night, reclining in each other’s arms on the uncompromising floor of that severe old gorge, but they only said, “I love you.” They said it in a hundred ways, lips to lips, but no way was original. Love knows no originality when it is sincere. “I love you” is all that can be said--three words, “I love you,” but they are the hinges that swing the door of life.