her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and take and hold; it
maddened him that this woman whom he could break in his hands
should be so much stronger than he. But near her, he never
questioned this strength; he admitted its potentiality as he
admitted the miracles of the Bible; it enervated and conquered him.

Tonight, when he rode so close to her that he could have touched
her, he knew that he might as well reach out his hand to
take a star.

Margaret stirred uneasily under his gaze and turned questioningly
in her saddle.

"This wind puts me a little out of breath when we ride fast,"
she said.

Eric turned his eyes away.

"I want to ask you if I go to New York to work, if I maybe
hear music like you sang last night? I been a purty good hand to
work," he asked, timidly.

Margaret looked at him with surprise, and then, as she studied
the outline of his face, pityingly.

"Well, you might--but you'd lose a good deal else. I shouldn't
like you to go to New York--and be poor, you'd be out of
atmosphere, some way," she said, slowly. Inwardly she was
thinking: There he would be altogether sordid, impossible--a
machine who would carry one's trunks upstairs, perhaps. Here he is