“Madam, there was the serpent! And why not? Is this not Eden? I swear it is paradise enough for me. Tell me, why is it that in the glimpses the sages give us of paradise they no more than lift the curtain—and let it fall again?”
“Captain Meriwether Lewis is singularly gloomy this morning!”
“Not more than I have been always. How brief was my little hour! Yet for that time I knew paradise—as I do now. We should part here, madam, now, forever. Yon serpent spelled danger for both of us.”
“For both of us?”
“No, forgive me! None the less, I could not help my thoughts—cannot help them now. I ride here every morning. I saw your horse’s hoof-marks some two miles back. Do you suppose I did not know whose they were?”
“And you followed me? Ah!”
“I suppose I did, and yet I did not. If I did I knew I was riding to my fate.”
She would have spoken—her lips half parted—but what she might have said none heard.
He went on: