As we followed the trail that wound up and into the heart of these
rounded hills and ever nearer to the purple mountains, the morning
breeze swept down to meet us, bearing a thousand scents, and filling us
with its own fresh life. One can know the quickening joyousness of these
Foothill breezes only after he has drunk with wide-open mouth, deep and
full of them.
Through all this mingling beauty of sunlit hills and shady hollows and
purple, snow-peaked mountains, we rode with hardly a word, every minute
adding to our heart-filling delight, but ever with the thought of
the little room where, shut in from all this outside glory, lay Gwen,
heart-sore with fretting and longing. This must have been in The Pilot's
mind, for he suddenly held up his horse and burst out:
"Poor Gwen, how she loves all this!--it is her very life. How can she
help fretting the heart out of her? To see this no more!" He flung
himself off his bronco and said, as if thinking aloud: "It is too awful!
Oh, it is cruel! I don't wonder at her! God help me, what can I say to
her?"
He threw himself down upon the grass and turned over on his face. After
a few minutes he appealed to me, and his face was sorely troubled.
"How can one go to her? It seems to me sheerest mockery to speak of
patience and submission to a wild young thing from whom all this
is suddenly snatched forever--and this was very life to her, too,
remember.
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