Here he lost the trend of his thoughts by beginning to wonder of what she could be thinking, but he called himself back sharply to the analysis of her features. It was a game with which he had often amused himself among the girls of his eastern acquaintance. Their beauty, after all, was their only weapon, and when he discovered that that weapon was not of pure steel, they became nothing; it was like pushing them away with an arm of infinite length. There was food for criticism in Sally's features. The nose, of course, was tipped up a bit, and the mouth too large, but Anthony discovered that it was almost impossible to centre his criticism on either feature. The tip-tilt of the nose suggested a quaint and infinitely buoyant spirit; the mouth, if generously wide, was exquisitely made. She was certainly not pretty, but he began to feel with equal certainty that she was beautiful. A waiting mood came on him while he watched, as one waits through a great symphony and endures the monotonous passages for the sake of the singing bursts of harmony to which the commoner parts are a necessary background. He began to wish that she would turn her head so that he could see her eyes. They were like the inspired part of that same symphony, a beauty which could not be remembered and was always new, satisfying. He could make her turn by speaking, and knowing that this was so, he postponed the pleasure like a miser who will only count his gold once a day. From the side view he dwelt on the short, delicately carved upper lip and the astonishingly pleasant curve of the cheek. "Look at me," he said abruptly. She turned, observed him calmly, and then glanced back to the fire. She asked no question. Her chin rested on her hands, now, so that when she spoke her head nodded a little and gave a significance to what she said. "The grey doesn't belong to you?" So she was thinking of horses! "Well," she repeated. "No." "Hoss-lifting," she mused. "Why shouldn't I take a horse when they had shot down mine?" She turned to him again, and this time her gaze went over him slowly, curiously, but without speaking she looked back to the fire, as though explanation of what "hoss-lifting" meant were something far beyond the grasp of his mentality. His anger rose again, childishly, sullenly, and he had to arm himself with indifference. "Who'd you drop, Bard?" "The one they call Calamity Ben." "Is he done for?" "Yes." The turmoil of the scene of his escape came back to him so vividly that he wondered why it had ever been blurred to obscurity. She said: "In a couple of hours we'd better ride on." CHAPTER XXXV ABANDON That was all; no comment, no exclamation--she continued to gaze with that faint, retrospective smile toward the fire. He knew now why she angered him; it was because she had held the upper hand from the minute that ride over the short pass began--he had never once been able to assert himself impressively. He decided to try now.