The young woman drew the horse to a halt and looked down at him. Her eyes, for the first time since they had met, registered concern.
"The altitude, probably. We're over nine thousand feet high. You're not used to walking in the clouds. We'll rest here."
She swung from the saddle and trailed the reins.
"Sit down," the girl ordered after she had seated herself tailor-fashion on the moss.
Reluctantly he did as he was told. He clenched his teeth in a cold rage at himself. Unless he conquered that habit of flying into panic at every crisis, he was lost.
Beulah leaned forward and plucked an anemone blossom from a rock cranny. "Isn't it wonderful how brave they are? You wouldn't think they would have courage to grow up so fine and delicate among the rocks without any soil to feed them."
Often, in the days that followed, he thought of what she had said about the anemones and applied it to herself. She, too, had grown up among the rocks spiritually. He could see the effect of the barren soil in her suspicious and unfriendly attitude toward life. There was in her manner a resentment at fate, a bitterness that no girl of her years should have felt. In her wary eyes he read distrust of him. Was it because she was the product of heredity and environment? Her people had outlawed themselves from society. They had lived with their hands against the world of settled order. She could not escape the law that their turbulent sins must be visited upon her.
Young Beaudry followed the lead she had given him. "Yes, that is the most amazing thing in life—that no matter how poor the soil and how bad the conditions fine and lovely things grow up everywhere."
The sardonic smile on her dark face mocked him. "You find a sermon in it, do you?"
"Don't you?"