For a moment he was appalled by the spectacle. But it was only for a moment! Recalling his manhood and her weakness, he stopped, and bracing his foot against a stone, with a graceful flourish of his lasso around his head, threw it in the air. It uncoiled slowly, sped forward with unerring precision, and missed! With the single cry of “Saved!” the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms! He held her closely until the color came back to her pale face. Then he quietly disentangled the lasso from his legs.
“Where am I?” she said faintly.
“In the same place,” he replied, slowly but firmly. “But,” he added, “you have changed!”
She had, indeed, even to her dress. It was now of a vivid brick red, and so much longer in the skirt that it seemed to make her taller. Only her hat remained the same.
“Yes,” she said, in a low, reflective voice and a disregard of her previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes with an eloquent lucidity, “I have changed, Paul! I feel myself changing at those words you uttered to Jane. There are moments in a woman's life that man knows nothing of; moments bitter and cruel, sweet and merciful, that change her whole being; moments in which the simple girl becomes a worldly woman; moments in which the slow procession of her years is never noted—except by another woman! Moments that change her outlook on the world and her relations to it—and her husband's relations! Moments when the maid becomes a wife, the wife a widow, the widow a re-married woman, by a simple, swift illumination of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a single word—a look—an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost—inductions lead nowhere. Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable. I mean,” she corrected herself hurriedly—“You know what I mean! If you have not felt it you have read it!”
“I have,” he said thoughtfully. “We have both read it in the same novel. She is a fine writer.”
“Ye-e-s.” She hesitated with that slight resentment of praise of another woman so delightful in her sex. “But you have forgotten the Moo Cow!” and she pointed to where the distracted animal was careering across the lawn towards the garden.
“You are right,” he said, “the incident is not yet closed. Let us pursue it.”
They both pursued it. Discarding the useless lasso, he had recourse to a few well-aimed epithets. The infuriated animal swerved and made directly towards a small fountain in the centre of the garden. In attempting to clear it, it fell directly into the deep cup-like basin and remained helplessly fixed, with its fore-legs projecting uneasily beyond the rim.
“Let us leave it there,” she said, “and forget it—and all that has gone before. Believe me,” she added, with a faint sigh, “it is best. Our paths diverge from this moment. I go to the summer-house, and you go to the Hall, where my father is expecting you.” He would have detained her a moment longer, but she glided away and was gone.