IMPROBABILITIES
hunter; when she had leaned on the balcony as the high priestess of housework, even when she had spoken of currying his horse, there had been no hint of the Amazon. She had worn a graceful air, social and schooled, suggesting the walled inclosure where women are supposed to play. There was no hint of the Amazon now—not that; only a suggestion of wildness afield, of moods that might not be held to the beat of regulated hours. And there had been other moments that morning, curious moments, when she had shown inexplicable looks. He recalled how she had sat dreaming on the old spring curb with eyes of imagination fixed on some place far off. "Splendid trampling things like horses," she had said, and he remembered how the color had come up in her face. Well, a girl's fancies! but what of that time he had called the spot of alarm to her cheeks? What of the glance she had darted at him and his joke about the selling of a horse, suspicious, quick as a sword? His mind fluctuated between credulity and a smile.
The scholar was pulling thoughtfully on his pipe, his eyes, at intervals, making excursions to the young man's face. "He believes it," Carron reflected, "yes, by Jove, he does!" The singular old chap, always in the clouds, knowing nothing real until it was translated into the unreal, his belief was not much reassur-
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