It was half glimpse, half conjecture,--the tough little ponies trotting stubbornly, a rider who leaned across laughing, and a woman who gayly cried at him: "You really do understand me, don't you ?" The two jogging shadows melted in the bamboo tracery, like things blown down the wind.

But for years Rudolph had known the words, the laugh, the beguiling cadence, and could have told what poise of the head went with them, what dangerous glancing light.

Suddenly, without reason, he felt a gust of rage.

It was he that understood.

It was to him these things belonged.