Presently they moved into the room and he held her from him while he searched her face. Since last he had seen her she had endured the sting of rain, the bluster of wind, and the beat of sun. They had played havoc with her wild-rose complexion and the satin of her skin. She was no longer the hothouse exotic he had married, a slip of a girl experimenting with life, but a woman strong as tested steel. Here was a mate worthy of any man, one with a vigorous, brave spirit clad in a body of exquisite grace, young and lissom and vital. An incomparable mate for some man! But was he the man that could hold her? His old doubts asserted themselves in spite of the white dream of her his heart had held through the years of their separation. She had been loyal—never a woman more so. But he wanted more than loyalty. Perhaps it was from him she got it. At any rate, an unexpected touch of shyness lowered her lashes. She caught up the baby and handed him to the father. “Here is your son,” she said, the colour glowing in her cheeks. Rowan looked at the little being that was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood, and his heart went out to the child in complete surrender. Something primeval, old as the race, set him in an inner tumult. The flame of life had passed through him to this dimpled babe. The child was his—and Ruth’s. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never again know quite the ecstasy of that moment. To escape the tension of her feeling Ruth hurried into explanations. “I’ve made all our arrangements for the next three days. You’re not to ask me anything about them. You’re going to be personally conducted by me and Baby, and you’ll have to do whatever we tell you to do. Do you understand, sir?” He smiled and nodded. This particular Ruth—the one that gave gay, imperious orders—was an old friend of his. His heart welcomed her. Apparently her plans included an automobile journey. Within an hour they were driving through a desert of sand and sagebrush toward the mountains. They glimpsed in the distance a couple of antelope shining in the sunlight. Once a sage hen whirred from almost beneath the wheels of the car. Great bare buttes rose in front of them and marched slowly to the rear. Rowan asked no questions. He wondered where she was taking him, but he was content to await developments so long as he could sit beside Ruth with the youngster on his lap. As for Ruth her blood began to beat faster with excitement. She was trying an experiment. If it proved a failure she knew she would be very greatly disappointed. Just now it seemed to her that she had set the whole happiness of her life at stake. For if Rowan did not look at it as she did, if his joy in it did not equal her hopes, they would fail by just so much of that unity of mind for which she prayed. They had left Rawlins before noon. It was well into the middle of the afternoon before the driver of the car stopped at a little two-store village deep in the hills.