For these reasons the change which he saw in her was not only delightfully unexpected but deeply puzzling.

She seemed to be under the influence of some new and absorbing excitement.

Her cheeks were flushed.

There was a different poise to her head; in her voice, too, there was a note which he had not noticed before.
It struck him, all at once, that this was a new Joanne--a Joanne who, at least for a brief spell, had broken the bondage of oppression and fear that had fettered her.

In the narrow trail up the mountain he rode behind her, and in this he found a pleasure even greater than when he rode at her side.