"Persiflage! Persiflage!" cried the Doge.

He and Jack were in the full tilt of controversy, Jack pressing an advantage as they came around the corner of the Ewold house. It was like the old times and better than the old times. For now there was understanding where then there had been mystery. The stream of their comradeship ran smoothly in an open country, with no unsounded depths.

"But I notice that you always say persiflage just as I am getting the better of the argument!" Jack whipped back.

"Has it taken you all this time to find that out? For what purpose is the word in the English vocabulary? But I'll take the other side, which is the easy one, next time, and then we'll see! Boom! boom!" The Doge pursed out his lips in mock terrorization of his opponent. "You are pretty near yourself again, young sir," he added, as he paused at the opening in the hedge.

"Yes, strength has been fairly flooding back the last two or three days. I can feel it travelling in my veins and making the tissues expand. It is glorious to be alive, O Doge!"

"Now, do you want me to take the other side on that question so you can have another unearned victory? I refuse to humor the invalid any longer and I agree. The proposition that it is glorious to live on such an afternoon as this is carried unanimously. But I will never agree that you can grow dates the equal of mine."

"Not until my first crop is ripe; then there will be no dispute!"

"That is real persiflage!" the Doge called after Jack.

Jack had made his first visit to the Doge's garden since he had left it to meet Prather and Leddy rather brief when he found that Mary was not at home. She had ridden out to the pass. Her trips to the pass had been so frequent of late that he had seen little of her during his convalescence. Yet he had eaten her jelly exclusively. He had eaten it with his bread, his porridge, his dessert, and with the quail that Firio had broiled. He had even intimated his willingness to mix it with his soup. She advised him to stir it into his coffee, instead.

When he was seated in the long chair on the porch and she called to ask how he was, they had kept to the domain of nonsense, with never a reference to sombre memories; but she was a little constrained, a little shy, and he never gave her cause to raise the barrier, even if she had been of the mind in face of a possible recurrence of former provocations while he was weak and easily tired. It was enough for him to hear her talk; enough to look out restfully toward the gray masses of the range; enough to know that the desert had brought him oblivion to the past; enough to see his future as clear as the V of Galeria against the sky, sharing the life of the same community with her.

And what else? He was almost in fear of the very question that was never out of his mind. She might wish him luck in the wars, but he knew her too well to have any illusions that this meant the giving of the great thing she had to give, unless in the full spontaneity of spirit. This afternoon, with the flood of returning strength, the question suddenly became commanding in a fresh-born suspense.

As he walked back to the house he met Belvy Smith and some of the children. Of course they asked for a story, and he continued one about a battered knight and his Heart's Desire, which he had begun some days previously.

"He wasn't a particularly handsome knight or particularly good—inclined to mischief, I think, when he forgot himself—but he was mightily in earnest. He didn't know how to take no. Say 'No!' to him and push him off the mountain top and there he was, starting for the peak again! And he was not so foolish as he might seem. When he reached the top he was happy just to get a smile from his Heart's Desire before he was tossed back again. His fingers were worn clear down to the first joint and his feet off up to the knees, so he could not hold on to the seams of canyons as well as before. He would have been a ridiculous spectacle if he weren't so pitiful. And that wasn't the worst of it. He was pretty well shot to pieces by the brigands whom he had met on his travels. With every ascent there was less of him to climb, you see. In fact, he was being worn down so fast that pretty soon there wouldn't be much left of him except his wishbone. That was indestructible. He would always wish. And after the hardest climb of all, here he is very near the top again, and—"

"And—and—"

"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsters on their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered the yard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!"

"You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked.

Jack hesitated thoughtfully.

"No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up that circus costume as a souvenir. We are past that stage of our career. My devil is dead."

It was Firio's turn to be thoughtful.

"SÍ! We had enough fight! We get old and sober! SÍ, I know! We settle down. I am going to begin to shave!" he concluded, stroking the black down on his boyish lip.

With the town behind him and the sinking sun over his shoulder, the battered knight rode toward the foothills and on up the winding path, oblivious of the Eternal Painter's magic and conscious only that every step brought him nearer his Heart's Desire. Here was the rock where she was seated when he had first seen her. What ages had passed since then! And there, around the escarpment, he saw her pony on the shelf! Dropping P.D.'s reins, he hurried on impetuously. With the final turn he found Mary seated on the rock where she had been the day that he had come to say farewell before he went to battle with the millions. Now as then, she was gazing far out over that sea of singing, quivering light, and the crunch of his footsteps awakened her from her revery.

But how differently she looked around! Her breaths were coming in a happy storm, her face crimsoning, her nostrils playing in trembling dilation. In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in a glorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding. He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped on his shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the very breath of her life.

"What do I see!" cried the Eternal Painter. "Two human beings who have climbed up as near heaven as they could and seem as happy as if they had reached it!"

"We have reached it!" Jack called back. "And we like it, you hoary-bearded, Olympian impersonality!"

Thus they watched the sun go down, gilding the foliage of their Little Rivers, seeing their future in the fulness and richness of the life of their choice, which should spread the oasis the length of that valley, and knowing that any excursions to the world over the pass would only sink their roots deeper in the soil of the valley that had given them life.

"Jack, oh, Jack! How I did fight against the thing that was born in me that morning in the arroyo! I was in fear of it and of myself. In fear of it I ran from you that day you climbed down to the pine. But I shan't run again—not so far but that I can be sure you can catch me. Jack, oh, Jack! And this is the hand that saved you from Leddy—the right hand! I think I shall always like it better than the left hand! And, Jack, there is a little touch of gray on the temples"—Mary was running her fingers very, very gently over the wound—"which I like. But we shall be so happy that it will be centuries before the rest of your hair is gray! Jack, oh, Jack!"

*****

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