A searching look next morning over the prairie revealed no sign of enemies, or of Smilax. Somewhat thoughtful over his continued absence I went to the kitchen and laid the fire, but did not light it because our stock of buttonwood had become reduced to a few small sticks and scraps that would scarcely more than cook one meal, and the use of other woods might at this time be an unwise experiment. So with an eye to prudence I withheld the match until Her Serene Highness should arrive.

When she did not come nor answer to my call, I set out to see what might have detained her, conscious of a vague dread yet not seriously giving in to it; but, after visiting the fort, this grew into an unreasoning fear, and I began to run. It seemed so easy now to understand how some of Efaw Kotee's henchmen could have discovered us, slipped up during the night and overpowered her! What had been a remote possibility yesterday, to-day grew into a certainty. With this obsession torturing me I dashed across the Oasis, finally coming out of the forest at its extreme eastern tip.

Then I saw her but a few yards away. Perhaps the brisk wind, rustling the palms and prairie grass, drowned the noise of my impetuous rush, for she did not turn.

Her face was toward the east, looking above an orange sun that still clung to the horizon. Instinctively I felt that she was thinking of Azuria, that the pictures of it which I had drawn were recrossing before her dreamy vision, forming a panorama of splendor that called more surely than in March the Canadian flats call the Southern water bird. This gave her eyes, her uplifted face, her slightly parted lips, a new glory, and I involuntarily exclaimed:

"Doloria of the Golden Dawn!"

She knew then that I was there and, without turning, reached back one hand to me. Impulsively I took it, raised it to my lips, but afraid to hold it longer I stepped aside as if awaiting her commands. When I had done that she looked over her shoulder, gave a little sigh, and said sweetly:

"Chancellor, I wish you'd convince me that our people are safe, and then help me settle a grave question of state!"

"I think they'll be coming to-day, and——"

"Oh, I hope so!" she clasped her hands.

"As for the state question," I continued, "I'll settle it quickly, if you'll let me."

"No, I'm afraid you can't! No, Chancellor," she gave a little laugh, "you can't be trusted to settle that, at all!" Then firmly, almost severely, putting back into its place a wave of hair that had been coquetting with the breeze, she asked: "Is the fire ready?"

"Ready to light," I answered. "I came to find you."

"Then let's go, for it isn't good to ponder over questions of state before breakfast."

"What is it?" I asked, as we turned back. "Why won't you trust me to settle it?"

Another laugh, more full of pathos, was my answer; nor would she speak again—because of some mischief in her mind, I believed—until, preparing the ambrosial corncakes, she rather abruptly exclaimed:

"I wonder if you deserve any breakfast this morning?"

"Why?" I cried, in feigned alarm.

"Because of your impoliteness."

"My impoliteness was doubtless the need of breakfast. But when was I impolite? I don't remember, honest!"

"Of course, you don't; how could you," she went on rather indifferently. "Were you not such a capable Chancellor I might be more offended. I am tryingly stupid at times, but to be in the very middle of a sentence and discover that the man I'm talking to is fast asleep, is humiliating, to say the least."

Did she think there was a chance of putting over that atrocious yarn on me—of bluffing me into an admission that I had been the first to fall asleep?

"You may be right," I said, with the utmost gravity, "but I did it only in justice to you. You were talking, true enough, but in your sleep; saying things that—well, no gentleman could have remained awake, in the circumstances."

"I didn't," she cried, darting me a look of uncertainty. "Echochee says I never do!"

"Echochee wasn't here last night," I casually replied, poking the coals of her fire closer. "I hope you understand that I didn't listen intentionally; for, of course, you'd never have told me all those things——"

"Stop it," she commanded; and, when I had stopped, there was an ominous silence.

But I would not look at her and indifferently pretended to be busy. I confess that I was deriving a purely masculine enjoyment out of this, and intended to push my counter bluff so vigorously that she would be driven to admit her own. Therefore, after I thought the silence had become sufficiently impressive, I yielded to an impulse that many men find irresistible—I made an egregious ass of myself.

"Lots of people," said I, sliding out upon thin ice with the braggadocio of him who rocks the boat, "chatter like magpies when dozing in an uncomfortable position. Police recognize this, and often arrange a suspect's cell so he'll have to sleep sitting up, then they listen and take down his inmost thoughts. That's the way you chattered last night."

"Chattered!" she caught her breath.

"Yes; just rippled along, you know, telling everything you've been thinking these last couple of days. Some of it was rather interesting. Shall I poke up the fire again?"

"Rather interesting!" She sprang around and faced me with blazing eyes, the picture of embarrassment and fury. "You consider the things I've been thinking the last couple of days 'rather interesting!' Oh," she cried, dashing the pan of corn meal batter to the ground, "you're damnable—I hate you!" There was a whirl of a skirt, the twinkle of a little booted foot, and, by Jove, she had gone flying off like the wind; while I, feeling about the size of a june-bug, stood first on one leg and then the other, wondering what the devil she had been thinking these last couple of days.

Now, when a fellow has made a blatant ass of himself, I hold that the quickest road to salvation is "own up and shut up." If he's forgiven, life may flow on as formerly. If he isn't, he has recourse to the pose of having been grossly misunderstood, and eventually work himself into quite a creditable reproduction of a martyred nobleman. If he's good at that kind of thing, a girl will grow sorry and forgive him in spite of herself. I got this from Tommy, one day, and Tommy knows a lot about women—really, an awful lot.

But the most detestable part of my present muddle was that I had hurt her—I, who would have bartered my life to shield her from hurts! Feeling thoroughly contrite I went quickly in pursuit, looking ahead and on both sides for a glimpse of the dress that meant the world to me. Regardless of boundaries, regardless of everything but to implore an instant forgiveness at whatever cost, I rushed impetuously on, calling her name.

Then I came up with her at the side of the bubbling spring. She was lying prone upon the bank, her face buried in her arms that were crossed beneath it. And, having found her, I could not advance. Something about the lovely grace of her body held me enthralled. Furthermore, I had no right to be here; I was an interloper, a prowler! There were but two things to do, and do at once, to wit, make myself humble and scarce.

"Doloria," I said.

She did not move, perhaps she had not heard, so I kneeled and took one of her hands, whereupon she sprang to her feet looking at me strangely, wildly.

"You've no right here," she cried. "You've broken faith!"

"No, please no," I said quickly. "I'm too desperate to care where I am when you're angry! Since you called me damnable—said you hated me—the world's turned black; so I'm not deliberately trespassing—only lost, because you've taken away your smile!"

"You took it away," she retorted. "You'd murder any girl's smile by such—brutality!"

"Brutality!" I gasped.

"Truthfulness," she stamped her foot.

"But I wasn't truthful," I hurried to tell her. "I lied like the devil to call your bluff—wanted to make you own up because—well, you'd lied a little, too! I never dreamed my joke would hurt you. Great God," I now cried passionately, "to think of hurting you who are my life and breath and——" I caught myself, stopping short and looking at her; then slowly adding: "You didn't say a word in your sleep, I swear it. It was beautiful of you to trust me that way, and—and if you'll rescue our breakfast I'll never be such an idiot again."

She had partly turned away at my impassioned outburst, but the assurance I gave that Somnus had been dumb brought a hint of the fascinating curve to her lips. Yet her eyes still expressed doubt, and I was growing desperate enough even to humor her incredulity, hoping thereby to discover another road to favor, when she asked:

"You're not just saying that?"

"On my honor it's true—every word! I'm sorry, Princess!"

Again she turned away her face, looking across the spring and murmuring, as though to someone there:

"It's because he's hungry, I suppose,"—then whirled and held out both hands to me, in that sweet way of hers. "It's I who am cruel, Chancellor. Come, poor man, I'll feed you; you look as glum as Pharaoh—was Pharaoh glum? I'll beat you to the kitchen!" And she bounded away, almost before the challenge had been given.

Straight she sped with astonishing swiftness, skimming over fallen logs, darting this way and that through festoons of vines, with the grace of a frightened doe. In freedom of motion she was as some wild thing of forest birth, suggesting the spirits of the wind, the dappled sunlight, the dancing waters; yet never lacking an ineffable refinement that added both charm and mystery.

Each of us was breathing fast when, shoulder to shoulder, we reached the fire, she claiming the race without the slightest show of embarrassment.

"But I was holding back," I said, finding combativeness a very fair outlet to pursue, and adding: "You had the start, too!"

"In a race any one has the start who's able to get it," she asserted. "Besides, I set the pace, and all you had to do was follow. I slowed up toward the end, anyway."

The impertinence of it!

"You slowed up because you had to! And I don't believe you were angry a while ago, either!"

"Don't you?" she asked, slowly.

"Not so very," I compromised, seeing the danger signal. "I think you were just making a jolly chump of me, that's all. I don't so much mind making one of myself, but it's rotten having other people do it for me!"

"I suppose," she said indifferently, raising her arms to tuck in a lock of hair, "that if it's worthwhile making the distinction, you might be allowed a choice."

For the pure deviltry of this remark I looked around for something to throw at her, and then saw our fire—a tragic picture of dead ashes which the wind was blowing over a now cold skillet.

"See," I cried, "what our family row has led to! Fire out, breakfast ruined, and here I am due at the office in half an hour!"

"Oh, Jack," she looked at me gravely, putting an end to our banter—and for the first time calling me Jack, though I believe she did it unconsciously—"haven't we any more buttonwood? This is serious, isn't it!"

"Not so very, perhaps. We can try another kind."

"Will it be safe?" she asked, uncertainly.

"With a small fire of very dry hardwood, and this rising wind, what little smoke there is won't hold together long enough to be seen."

"But it'll blow right toward their camp! The wind's changed since yesterday!"

"That's more than two miles off, and they're probably still after Smilax. I'll make a very small fire."

This, indeed, seemed to work well enough, and by the time a new breakfast was ready our uncertainties had become shadows of no consequence.

"But you do know I was angry, don't you?" she asked, out of a clear sky, with an unexpectedness that made me throw back my head and laugh.

"You bet I do! And you beat me in the race, too; and you're the best cook on our block!"

"It seems to be the same old story," she smiled, with affected sorrow, "that food must always be the price of masculine tractability. Ah, the long drawn out tragedy of woman's existence, that she must forever be stuffing man with things to eat, as reptiles are stuffed, to keep him facile!"

"You fail to observe, my little snake charmer," I replied, "that you omitted to say good things to eat. I'm never facile after Smilax feeds me."—Though I owe Smilax an apology for this!

"He must have run great risks of being bitten."

"Oh, no; I'm not the biting kind of snake! I'm a constrictor—I hug!"

"Mercy!" She gave a little gasp, then, turned and went indifferently toward the spring.

Whistling happily I finished the dishes. But I finished them with the promise of a better cleansing next time, and soon was calling her.

She came to me humming the song I had been whistling—an unconscious bit of flattery on her part, but it added to my pleasure. There is, after all, so much to be gained by hitching your wagon to a star, that I tried to believe she deliberately intended it. I would have hitched up oftener to that same star, except for the fact that stars sometimes get hot and furious at too many liberties, and switch their tails and kick the wagons of well-meaning people to smithereens. That it may be better to have had a stellar joy-ride and be sent to hell for speeding than keep your boots forever in the clay, I will neither affirm nor deny; but the prudent man hitcheth to the moon!

As we went toward the fort she turned to me, asking:

"Don't you think they should have been here sooner? Do you fear anything you won't tell me?" Her eyes were anxious, and I saw how insistent this worry had been.

"Everything depends on how far Smilax had to go," I answered. "He'd never dream of coming back until the men gave up—and they might chase him half across the state! So a few extra days doesn't mean anything. They can't catch him, that's certain; and he and Echochee'll only stay away as long as they're pursued. They'll come through, I believe it sincerely; and your Chancellor, sweet Princess, will guard you with his life—with ten lives, if he had them."

"I know that," she murmured, "and shan't worry if you tell me not to."

"Then cheer up! Smilax is a past-master of the swamps and woods, take my word for it!"

"I really suppose Echochee knows a great deal about them, too," she said, after a pause, "for when she was sixteen she had to leave the Reservation with her husband and hide him in the Everglades. She learned a great deal, then."

"Why did she have to do that?"

"He'd fought and killed another Indian, and the officers were expected. But in the fight he received a cut that made him blind. For ten years Echochee fed and clothed him, hunting alligators and watching her chance of slipping the skins to a market. By extreme stinting she finally saved enough to 'buy him loose'—her optimistic way of saying 'pay a lawyer for his defense.' Think, after being outcasts all that time, of leading a blind husband through half a hundred miles of wilderness, with the savings of ten years to wager on a chance of having him cleared!"

"I hope he was," I declared.

"In a sense he was, yes. He knew where she kept the money, and while she was in the lawyer's office persuading him to take the case, her husband stole it and sneaked away."

I uttered a cry at this hideous ingratitude, and she glanced at me, gravely adding:

"Then he got drunk and was run over by a train; so, in a sense, Echochee freed him, after all."

"Oh, the magnanimous courage of a woman's devotion!" I stopped and looked at her. "It's always the same, irrespective of tribe and nation. She's dauntless, world-defying, utterly self-sacrificing. I hope to God, Doloria, that you won't be among those who squeeze their hearts dry! You've lived away from the world and may not know how plentiful these are; but no day passes without its toll of some woman being silently crucified in her losing fight to save a besotted biped—the lord of her earthly temple. It's only by a streak of luck when their stage is cleared, as Echochee's was!"

"That may be all right for clearing the stage," she murmured, "but it doesn't heal the hearts of those who were made to suffer."

I had not fathomed the penetration of her sympathy, being satisfied, man like, to let a swift revenge wipe the slate. She seemed to be contemplating what I had said, and when she again spoke her voice was tender as though it had come unbidden from a wistful reverie.

"I suppose you're right, Jack. The world I've known, only through books, must be full of such cruelties. I rather dread having to go into it. It seems a pity that I can't always live in—in——" then, with a smile, she asked: "Do you ever dream? I don't mean when you're asleep, but awake—wide awake?"

"I rather think I'm dreaming now," I admitted, for a great contentment had fallen about us as we walked beneath the solemn trees.

The silence that followed was again stirred by her voice, saying:

"You mustn't think me childish, but I've always had a secret gateway to a place—my Secret world—where everything is make-believe, and nothing can be but truth and beauty. Often when Echochee was tiresome, or I was tired, I used to slip away and go there."

"I wish you'd take me—won't you?"

"Oh, I can't," she quickly answered, stooping for a flower in our path, holding it in both hands and leaning her face above it.

"Yes," at last I said, "I've a place like that; but I don't know whether I live there in make-believe, or throwing off the make-believe we have to wear in the world you're going to, I live honestly with myself. If you won't take me to yours, sometime maybe you'll come to mine!"

Now, I had no intention of making love to her. We were talking only about secret worlds and day-dreams.

"I'm afraid it might be difficult," she answered, dropping the flower and walking a shade more slowly. "Our lives—yours and mine—are cast along such opposite lines, it seems!"

"That's what Secret worlds are for," I told her, "——that, no matter how far apart we are, our spirits may come and meet; live again, as we've lived here; be happy again—as I've been." I turned, saying with a laugh that was meant to convey an impression of insouciance—yet failing rather miserably: "These two big pines here, Princess, actually make the gateway to my pool—which is, in fact, my Secret world, because you helped me build my home there. So, you see, it wouldn't be very difficult, as you were about to enter without knowing it. Oh, I wish I could tell you more about it!" And I then became silent, too helplessly afraid to go on.

A brighter color had come into her throat and cheeks, but she was smiling whimsically as she said:

"Then we must go around—find another path to the fort—mustn't we!"

She had stopped before me, poised delicately, almost swaying; and for several seconds our eyes, that must have been charged with some untranslatable excitement, held fast. Mine would not let go, and hers I believe could not. Her hands, idly at her sides, were turned palms forward, unconsciously suggestive of supplication.

"Do you know what you remind me of when you stand that way?" I asked.

"No," She looked away now, laughing lightly—though it was more subtly than suddenly done. "What?"

"Of a fairy that's flown from a butterfly moon, just alighting at my threshold and asking to come in."

"Wouldn't a fairy be unseemly forward to come to a young man's threshold and ask admittance?"

"Not admittance, but admission—to my dreams, where nothing is real but you and beauty."

"Dreams are for the old, the young shall see visions!—isn't there a quotation like that?" she asked, smiling.

"You're not playing fair," I laughed—for I was afraid not to laugh, wanting desperately to say that I was seeing the vision now that would be my dream forever!

"I'll play fair if I know the rules," she also laughed. "You haven't told them to me!"

"We'll make them up as we go along!"

"But what are we going to play?"

"Make-believe," I eagerly cried. "That we're exploring our Secret world where we'll come after,"—there was no laugh in my voice now—"you've gone to Azuria, and I'm here alone."

She gave my face a quick, searching look.

"And we only have to pass between these two big trees?" she asked, half lightly, half timidly.

"Only through that gateway, and we're in our world!"

"Why should I go, I wonder?" The question was whispered, almost unconsciously, and catching the tone of it I also whispered:

"To plant a memory, Doloria, that will grow and bloom as long as we live; where each of us may come—when we're lonely."

What forces, intangible, supernal, were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in grumbling blindness.

At this moment our wood seemed rich with mystic presage. Pleadingly my hands went out to her, and trustfully she put hers into them. Slowly I backed between the two big trees, our eyes held as two charmed beings. Everything about me called to her, everything in her urged compliance; and I knew, as did she, that something strange was happening. Yet when I halted she did not falter, but came on, bravely, sweetly, into my arms.

That she should have done this was as inevitable as it was gloriously true. We could no more have continued to stroll side by side through our Oasis, commenting on the seasons, sometimes rapturous over a sunset or the call of a bird, than we could have rubbed a lamp and brought the Whim sailing to us over the sea of grass. Static existences only prevail with static people, and there was too much surgingly dynamic about this twenty year old girl to have encouraged it here. I say, too, with candor that any man of twenty-six whose blood is red is—with the great out-of-doors abetting—not insulated for or against currents. Throw these two alone in a primitive world where their tent is the sky, and a spark must eventually jump across the gradually lessening distance. It is thus that wild things mate—and their mating is incorruptible.

But now as my arms tightened and my face leaned to hers, she gave a half fearful cry and sprang tremblingly back, pressing both hands to her breast, breathing quickly and staring at me with wide eyes.

"Chancellor," she gasped, "this is madness, don't you know it?"

The quick alarm in her voice sobered me and I answered "Yes," for there was nothing else to say. And a moment later when, in an even tone and at a conventional distance, she suggested: "Shall we go on to the fort?" I did not reply, but walked mutely at her side.

Our contact had been too instantaneous for me to collect myself at once, and I wondered how she was managing to do so—or if she were bluffing. For this sudden serene-mindedness she now displayed was quite too enigmatic for my comprehension.

"We planted the memory that will be mine forever," I whispered, trying to see her face which she kept partially hid by keeping half a step ahead of me. "I'll never forget our——"

"Oh," she cried, on the verge of tears, I thought, "don't ever speak to me of it again—ever!"

"It's nothing we ought to regret—it wasn't your fault," I persisted,——

"That's just it—it was my fault, it was," she interrupted passionately, and somehow her hand found mine and pressed it. Was there ever any one more square? "I knew we were going to—do that, and I didn't try to stop it. You'll think that I'm—I'm——"

"The most glorious girl who ever lived," I cried, taking full possession of her hand now.

"Won't you please be honest?" she asked, quite seriously. "I am; and I give you my word I'd never have done it if it hadn't seemed so real—I mean, our planting the memory."

She turned then, and to my relief she was half smiling. For an instant the longing to hold her again showed in my face, but she stopped me with a look. This time it was done with the intention of stopping me, and I stopped. Yet the smile had not left her face as she said, in a tone of sweet confidence:

"Let's be above-the-board-honest with each other in all things, Jack; it makes for long friendships, Echochee says—and there's nothing finer, anyhow, than to freely admit a mistake. So it wasn't your fault any more than mine; we've both been very naughty spirits, and we mustn't be again." She paused, adding: "After all, I suppose it does make our secret world just a little——"

I waited, and when she did not continue, asked:

"A little what?"

Still she hesitated.

"Be honest," I warned.

She smiled again, looking at me frankly.

"Well, a little sweeter, to feel that we're equally to blame; that that's why we can't ever go there again."

"Eden up-to-date?" I laughed.

"Y-yes, I suppose so; and the flaming sword has smote us, so we have to be circumspect forever and ever."

"But Eve wasn't! The flaming sword didn't phaze her a minute!"

"I've had lots of time to improve on Eve," she replied archly.

"That's God's truth," I cried.

A rippling laugh burst from her lips—a ringing, happy laugh that was heard, I swear, in listening heaven. She seemed obsessed by a strange excitement—perhaps like my own, that sprang from a deep, inordinate sense of pleasure.

We were getting on toward the fort, walking inside the edge of our Oasis near that place where the fallen palms lay in a confused tangle. I had her hand and was helping her over this network of logs when she suddenly sprang before me with dazzling quickness; facing outward, and holding back her arms to keep me in check.

It was an act instinctive of protection, yet scarcely had I time to wonder at it when a whining, crackling sound, that might have come from anywhere, dashed past our heads. Men who have heard a high-power bullet splitting the air do not forget the sound, which is as quickly recognized a second time as the rattling of a diamond-back.

Immediately following it came the crack of a rifle, and guided by this I saw, above the prairie grass four hundred yards away, the head and shoulders of a man. At that instant he fired again.