"Well, it isn't.
It--it's something else--something so different--I don't even
understand what it is. I don't even know if there is anything. Yet
there must be; it affects me so. I'm afraid--and yet I'm not. I--I
rather like it, too. That's why I'm afraid; I like it so well. It
seems so--soothing."
"Miss----" began Roger and paused, puzzled at what to call her.
Her response was a languid chuckle.
"My name? How formal! Does it seem natural to be formal here? It
doesn't to me. And it doesn't seem pleasant; it jars so. That's why
the other thing, whatever it is, seems so inviting and inevitable. So
natural. No formality. No straining. Nothing but--that."
"What is--'that'?" asked Payne.
"I don't know," she responded in wide-eyed wonderment. "Really, I
don't. It isn't anything tangible. It's over there some place," she
nodded languidly across the prairie. "It--frightened me to-night. I
ran away--but I didn't escape it."
"It's Garman!" blurted Payne hoarsely.
"Oh, don't!" She cowered against the pony. "Please--please don't!
Oh, if you don't wish to be cruel----"
"Miss Annette!"
The utterance of her name seemed to bring back a sense of her true
self. She straightened herself slowly to her full height, and her
poise of assurance seemed to come back to its own.
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