During the long ride he had come to feel toward her as toward another man, as strong as himself, almost, as fine a horseman, and much surer of herself on that wild trail; but now the laughter in an instant rubbed all this away.

It was rather low, and with a throaty quality of richness.

The pulse of the sound was like a light finger tapping some marvellously sensitive chord within him.
"D'you think that ?" she said, and went directly through the door of the house.
He heard the crazy floor creak beneath her weight; the saddle dropped with a thump; a match scratched and a flight of shadows shook across the doorway.

The light did not serve to make the room visible; it fell wholly upon his own mind and troubled him like the waves which spread from the dropping of the smallest pebble and lap against the last shores of a pool.

Dumfounded by her casual surety, he remained another moment with the rein in the hollow of his arm.
Finally he decided to mount as silently as possible and ride off through the night away from her.