He became rigidly quiet. When she had sunk deep into sleep, only her breast moving with the ebb and flow of her quiet breath, he crept nearer and drew a blanket over her, careful not to touch her. He looked at the unconscious face for a moment, then softly dropped the blanket and stole back to his place ready to turn at the first foot fall and lift a silencing hand.
It was one of the beautiful moments that had come to him in his wooing. He sat in still reverie, feeling the dear responsibilities of his ownership. That she might sleep, sweet and soft, he would work as no man ever worked before. To guard, to comfort, to protect her—that would be his life. He turned and looked at her, his sensitive face softening like a woman's watching the sleep of her child. Susan, all unconscious, with her rich young body showing in faint curves under the defining blanket, and her hair lying loose among the roots of the lupine bush, was so devoid of that imperious quality that marked her when awake, was so completely a tender feminine thing, with peaceful eyelids and innocent lips, that it seemed a desecration to look upon her in such a moment of abandonment. Love might transform her into this—in her waking hours when her body and heart had yielded themselves to their master.
David turned away. The sacred thought that some day he would be the owner of this complex creation of flesh and spirit, so rich, so fine, with depths unknown to his groping intelligence, made a rush of supplication, a prayer to be worthy, rise in his heart. He looked at the sunset through half-shut eyes, sending his desire up to that unknown God, who, in these wild solitudes, seemed leaning down to listen:
"Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
The sun, falling to the horizon like a spinning copper disk, was as a sign of promise and help. The beauty of the hour stretched into the future. His glance, shifting to the distance, saw the scattered dots of the disappearing buffalo, the shadows sloping across the sand hills, and the long expanse of lupines blotting into a thick foam of lilac blue.
Susan stirred, and he woke from his musings with a start. She sat up, the blanket falling from her shoulders, and looking at him with sleep-filled eyes, smiled the sweet, meaningless smile of a half-awakened child. Her consciousness had not yet fully returned, and her glance, curiously clear and liquid, rested on his without intelligence. The woman in her was never more apparent, her seduction never more potent. Her will dormant, her bounding energies at low ebb, she looked a thing to nestle, soft and yielding, against a man's heart.
"Have I slept long?" she said stretching, and then, "Isn't it cold."
"Come near the fire," he answered. "I've built it up while you were asleep."
She came, trailing the blanket in a languid hand, and sat beside him. He drew it up about her shoulders and looked into her face. Meeting his eyes she broke into low laughter, and leaning nearer to him murmured in words only half articulated:
"Oh, David, I'm so sleepy."