The spoken thought--the sound of the words played havoc with Lucy's self-conscious calmness. She burned. She trembled. She was in a rage with herself. She spurred Sarchedon into a run and tore through the sage, down into the valley, running him harder than she should have run him. Then she checked him, and, penitent, petted him out of all proportion to her thoughtlessness. The violent exercise only heated her blood and, if anything, increased this sudden and new torment. Why had she discarded her boy's rider outfit and chaps for a riding-habit made by her aunt, and one she had scorned to wear? Some awful, accusing voice thundered in Lucy's burning ears that she had done this because she was ashamed to face Lin Slone any more in that costume--she wanted to appear different in his eyes, to look like a girl. If that shameful suspicion was a fact why was it---what did it mean? She could not tell, yet she was afraid of the truth. All of a sudden Lin Slone stood out clearer in her mental vision--the finest type of a rider she had ever known--a strong, lithe, magnificent horseman, whose gentleness showed his love for horses, whose roughness showed his power--a strange, intense, lonely man in whom she had brought out pride, gratitude, kindness, passion, and despair. She felt her heart swell at the realization that she had changed him, made him kinder, made him divide his love as did her father, made him human, hopeful, longing for a future unfettered by the toils of desert allurement. She could not control her pride. She must like him very much. She confessed that, honestly, without a qualm. It was only bewildering moments of strange agitation and uncertainty that bothered her. She had refused to be concerned by them until they had finally impinged upon her peace of mind. Then they accused her; now she accused herself. She ought not go to meet Lin Slone any more. "But then--the race!" she murmured. "I couldn't give that up.... And oh! I'm afraid the harm is done! What can I do?" After the race--what then? To be sure, all of Bostil's Ford would know she had been meeting Slone out in the sage, training his horse. What would people say? "Dad will simply be radiant, IF he can buy Wildfire--and a fiend if he can't," she muttered. Lucy saw that her own impulsiveness had amounted to daring. She had gone too far. She excused that--for she had a rider's blood--she was Bostil's girl. But she had, in her wildness and joy and spirit, spent many hours alone with a rider, to his undoing. She could not excuse that. She was ashamed. What would he say when she told him she could see him no more? The thought made her weak. He would accept and go his way--back to that lonely desert, with only a horse. "Wildfire doesn't love him!" she said.