anticipated failed to materialize. He stood, breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal. By the same magic, perhaps, that had transfigured her a moment past, she was now invested again by the older character. 

 "Shore I reckon my callin' y'u a gentleman was a little previous," she said, with a rather dry bitterness.  "But, stranger, yu're sudden." 

 "You're not insulted?" asked Jean, hurriedly. 

 "Oh, I've been kissed before. Shore men are all alike." 

 "They're not," he replied, hotly, with a subtle rush of disillusion, a dulling of enchantment.  "Don't you class me with other men who've kissed you. I wasn't myself when I did it an' I'd have gone on my knees to ask your forgiveness.... But now I wouldn't—an' I wouldn't kiss you again, either—even if you—you wanted it." 

 Jean read in her strange gaze what seemed to him a vague doubt, as if she was questioning him. 

 "Miss, I take that back," added Jean, shortly.  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. It was a mean trick for me to kiss you. A girl alone in the woods who's gone out of her way to be kind to me! I don't know why I forgot my manners. An' I ask your pardon." 

 She looked away then, and presently pointed far out and down into the Basin. 

 "There's Grass Valley. That long gray spot in the black. It's about fifteen miles. Ride along the Rim that way till y'u cross a trail. Shore y'u can't miss it. Then go down." 

 "I'm much obliged to you," replied Jean, reluctantly accepting what he regarded as his dismissal. Turning his horse, he put his foot in the stirrup, then, hesitating, he looked across the saddle at the girl. Her abstraction, as she gazed away over the purple depths suggested loneliness and wistfulness. She was not thinking of that scene spread so wondrously before her. It struck Jean she might be pondering a subtle change in his feeling and attitude, something he was conscious of, yet could not define. 

 "Reckon this is good-by," he said, with hesitation. 

 "ADIOS, SENOR," she replied, facing him again. She lifted the little carbine to the hollow of her elbow and, half turning, appeared ready to depart. 

 "Adios means good-by?" he queried. 

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