"Do you think I'd scratch you horribly if I kissed you--Rita?"

She lowered her eyes but not her face. "You might try--Josh."





CHAPTER XXIV

"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"


Next morning she was up and in her dressing-room and had almost
finished her toilette before he awakened. For the first time in
years--perhaps the first time since the end of her happy girlhood
and the beginning of her first season in Washington society--she
felt like singing. Was there ever such a dawn? Did ever song of
birds sound so like the voice of eternal youth? Whence had come
this air like the fumes from the winepresses of the gods? And the
light! What colors, what tints, upon mountain and valley and
halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next room--yes, there WAS
a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at times; but that
Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the strong,
straight form there, had resigned it to a man who was the living
expression of all that bewitched her in these wilds.

She laughed softly at her own ecstasy of exaggeration. "The other
Josh will come back," she reminded herself, "and I must not forget
to be practical. THIS is episodic." These happy, superhuman