If Gordon had happened to look behind him before riding on down into the caÑon, he might have seen with the naked eye two black dots crawling like flies along the high bare flank of a mountain far behind. Under a binocular the flies would have resolved into Lee and Ramon. Further, in that clear, dry atmosphere, a good telescope would have revealed both the girl’s worried expression and Ramon’s glowing ardor. For just as the “wages of sin is death,” so the wages of flirtation—especially if the party of the second part be of Latin blood—is apt to be disaster. Lee was now reaping where she had sown, garnering in full measure, heaped up and pressed down, last night’s consequences.

With a girl’s keen intuition in such things, she had seen it coming and had thought of turning back. But after her summary dismissal of Gordon, that would have appeared ridiculous—besides, though she would not have admitted it, there he was riding on to a rendezvous with that dreadful girl! How she regretted, now, the flirtation! How she berated herself for sending him home! But, there being nothing else to do, she had ridden rapidly, staving off the inevitable with a stream of excited chatter—Ramon’s family, hacienda affairs, the scenery—while she dodged like a chased rabbit she secretly wondered at herself. Supposing this were six months ago? Say, on the morning she had put on his hat? Would she have doubled and dodged? She knew better! She could not say, herself, what her answer might have been! But she did know that she would have let him speak.

If then, why not now? Was it Gordon? Her pride—bolstered by irritation, for with a woman’s illogic she charged her present plight to him—her pride rose in arms at the thought! Nevertheless, it did not prevent her from riding hard on his trail; nor from holding Ramon off with an effort great as a physical strain.

But it was all in vain. Her retreats, though real, were alluring as the mock ones which, at that moment, Felicia was practising on Gordon. And their effect was the same. Her efforts were as bags of sand piled to check a rising torrent. Stayed for a time, it rose the higher; presently leaped over and swept all before it.

A remark of hers concerning his father’s age precipitated the flood. “Si, he has many years.” Then, his dark, handsome face aglow, Ramon ran on: “Yesterday he was saying that he would be content to pass could he but see me settled with a wife. I told him it depended on”—he paused, then added the tu of lovers—“on thee. If—”

“Oh, Ramon!” she pleaded, in wild distress. “Please—don’t!”

But the dam was gone! In terms that would seem extravagant in English, but flowed naturally in the eloquent, rhythmic Spanish, he told his love. Sunshine and star fire; moonlight and bird-song; the bloom of spring flowers; loom of the mountains; wide spread of the desert—all were she! Warmth, light, happiness, from her proceeded! She was his universe. In her all beauty dwelt! And so on. To a girl who loved him, it would have been delightful wooing. Six months ago she would have listened, charmed; perhaps have been persuaded. But now—it filled her with dismay.

“Oh, you poor Ramon!” She held out her hand in remorse and pity, but when, seizing it, he tried to draw her to him, she pulled away. “Oh no! no! Oh, what a miserable creature I am! Here I have played—”

But she got no further. Realizing with sympathetic intuition that the moment was unpropitious, he stopped her. “There is no hurry. I did not intend to tell thee for a little while. But there is no harm done. Thou hast always known it.”

“Oh yes.” Tears dimming the blue eyes, she nodded. “Yes, but—” Then realizing that argument would but reopen the case, she accepted the compromise. “No, I won’t answer now. Wait.”

“If there be any one else—” His brow drew down over somber, threatening eyes.

“Oh, there isn’t!” She was conscious, herself, of over-emphasis. But she repeated again. “There isn’t, Ramon!”

“Bueno!” His face cleared. “Then I am content.”

Now she was conscious of vast relief as though at the passing of imminent danger. Relief from what? She refused to think.

Content with her reassurance, he laughed and chatted again as they moved on, but it was a miserable girl that rode beside him; one torn between remorse and a dread curiosity concerning feelings which she obstinately refused to examine. When, finally, they rode down into the caÑon, curiosity and remorse both gave place to indefinite apprehension. Without trying, she learned more of herself while they followed the zigzag staircases down and down than she dared to contemplate.

Their first view of the fonda showed, of course, only the roof and walls. But from the lower levels they sighted, first, Gordon’s horse tied to a post of the ramada, then the young man himself leaning at ease across the bar. Ramon, who was riding ahead, obtained first view of the “long-haired diccionario,” which was now being consulted in the matter of hair and eyes.

“The seÑor seems to be enjoying himself.”

His laugh came floating back. Passing around the next turn, he did not see Lee rein in her beast. Sitting her horse, still as a marble statue, she watched from across the stream the girl’s head go up and meet Gordon’s in a kiss.

For a disinterested spectator the scene would have had vast interest. The chrome-yellow walls of the fonda, toned under the eaves by Time’s green brush; the great shading trees through which the sun sent down a greenish lace of light; the stream singing musically among its glazed brown boulders; all formed a proper setting for the forest love which knows no other sanction than that of the eye. The beauty and abandon of it all would have thrilled the aforesaid disinterested spectator; have carried a theater by storm. But Lee was neither disinterested nor an audience—in the accepted sense. She saw only the abandon. Conscious of a deathly chill at her heart, white as the aforesaid statue, she just sat her beast.

In taking the last turn, Ramon’s horse dislodged a pebble, and as it rolled down the bank and splashed in the stream Gordon broke the girl’s clasp. Ramon was still out of sight, and Gordon’s glance of startled inquiry rose to Lee sitting above, so still and quiet.

“My God, she saw it!”

Even as it flashed upon him he was convicted of a vast and sudden change wrought in himself by the last twenty-four hours. Only yesterday he had assured Lee, with sincerity, that he lost interest in grown-up girls. Now, just because she had caught him in a little gallantry, the whole world had gone to smithereens!

“Competition is the life of love!” Mrs. Mills might have added—sometimes its death. The “wind” had blown with a vengeance—from opposite ways. Sitting above, Lee shook under its chill. Below, Gordon shivered. Though only a few seconds passed before she rode on down and joined Ramon in front of the fonda, it seemed to both a deathless age.

After passing a pleasant word with Gordon, Ramon had called for a drink, and till Felicia brought her a glass Lee sat quietly talking. But as the girl looked up, revealing the soft glow in her great dusky eyes, Lee stiffened and looked at Gordon.

“I am glad that we overtook you. SeÑor Icarza has asked me to marry him. You shall be first to congratulate us.”

Gordon’s glance had risen to hers in wonder and consternation. Then—the tricks fancy plays us! Fonda and ravine faded into a glade in a Java forest where the light broke down through giant fronds and twined a golden aureole around her fair hair. From that great distance, without recognizing it for his own, he heard a voice.

“I wish you all happiness!”

The crash of Lee’s glass as she threw it among the stones brought him back to the sight of her riding at full speed down the caÑon.

Ramon was looking after her, transfixed with wonder.

Gordon’s practical Anglo-Saxon instinct was first to assert itself. He spoke very quietly. “We’d better catch her before she breaks her neck.”