It was the happiness found in little of one who has been starved, nourished by trifles, tiny seeds flowering into growths that touched the sky. She did not see Mayer as often as formerly and when she did their talk was on other things than love. In fact he was rather shy of the subject, did not repeat his kiss, was more comrade than wooer. But he sought her, he had told her why and that was enough. What he had said she believed, not alone because it seemed the only reasonable explanation of his actions, but because she wanted to believe it. He had come, a nonchalant wayfarer, and grown to care, said at last the words she was longing to hear, and, hearing, she felt them true and was satisfied. And then she had drifted, content to rest in the complete comfort of her belief. The moment was enough, and she stood on the summit of each one, swaying in blissful balance. Vaguely she knew she was moving on a final moment, on a momentous, ultimate decision, and she neither cared nor questioned. Like a sleepwalker she advanced, inevitably drawn, seeing a blurred dazzle at the path's end in which she would finally be absorbed. Everything that had made her Pancha Lopez, familiar to herself, was gone. She was somebody else, somebody filled with a brimming gladness, with no room for any other feeling. Her old, hard self-sufficiency seemed a poor, bleak thing, her high head was lowered and gloried in its abasement. All the fierce, combative spirit of the past had vanished; even her work, heretofore her life, was executed automatically and pushed aside, an obstruction between herself and the sight and thought of Mayer. The laws that had ruled her conduct, the pride that had upheld her, melted like cobwebs before the sun. She lived to please a man she thought loved her and that she loved to the point where honor had become an empty word and self-respect transformed to self-surrender. Whatever he would ask of her she was ready to give. The Indian's blood prompted her to the squaw's impassioned submission, the outlaw's to a repudiation of the law and the law's restraints. Early in January her father came down and when he asked her about Mayer she lied as she had to Crowder. She told him she still saw the man but that his devotion had lapsed, giving evidence of a languishing interest. When she saw her father's relief she had qualms, but her lover's voice on the phone, asking her to dine with him that night, dispersed them. All the lies in the world then didn't matter to Pancha. So she drifted, not caring whither, only caring that she should see Mayer, listen to him, dwell on his face, try to catch his wish before it was spoken. Her outer envelope was the same, performed the same tasks, lived in the same routine, but a new creature, a being of fire, dwelt within it. CHAPTER XIV THE NIGHT RIDER