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WILD THINGS AND TAME

want me to take your good mare and jump through?"

It was a very pretty little vision that brought up. "No, you've done all the equestrian feats you are going to do this morning," he declared, and let her lead him away.

He let her lead him from the subject as well as from the sight. It was not the time to press questions now, while they were borne along in the bright tide of action, their attention scattered, their minds lulled, their eyes satisfied with the sight of each other, as mere pictures—the sense of each other as persons, as magnets, cut off by the stream of the wind. It needed inaction, a sitting side by side looking over one constant piece of landscape, idle hands, broken talk, drifting into personal questions to set them venturing into the dangerous debatable land, the exchange of thoughts which sometimes brings such amazing confidences. He began to spy about for some temporary stopping-place. The watershed was already grown tall behind them, and they were winding endlessly in and out among a brown tumble of hills. These looked like the young children of the mountains, with unformed outcroppings of stone. Their growth of pine was scant and immature. The sun beat dazzlingly through it. He looked up wistfully at their little rocky crowns.

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