After riding rapidly for some distance, they reached long, lonely
stretches, favorable for conversation, and Graydon was too fond of
hearing Madge talk to lose the opportunity. He looked wonderingly
at her flushed face, with the freshness of the morning in it; her
brilliant eyes, from which flashed a spirit that nothing seemed
to daunt; the sudden compression of her lips, as with power and
inimitable grace she reined in her chafing steed. Never before had
she appeared so vital and beautiful, and he rode at her side with
something like exultation that they were so much to each other. He
was turning his back on a past fraught with peril, over which hung the
shadow of what must have been a lifelong disappointment.
"The girl who would have taken me, as Henry chooses among commercial
securities, cannot now make me an adjunct to her self-pleasing
career," he thought. "I am free--free to become to Madge what I was in
old times. No one now has the right to look askance at our affection
and companionship. What an idiot I was to endure Stella's criticism
while she was playing it so sharp between Arnault and myself! No
wonder crystal Madge said she and Stella were not congenial!
"I call Madge crystal, yet I don't understand her fully, and have not
since my return.
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