He touched it and bent.

He looked at her.

A surge of impossible questions rolled to his mouth and rolled back, with the thought of an incredible thing, that her manner, more than her words, held him from doubting.
'I obey you,' he said.
'You are kind.' He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bowing, to one of the wayside trees, cantered.

The man was gone; but not from Nataly's vision that face of wet chalk under one of the shades of fire..