The first hint of her old combative spirit or her old archness!
A wave of feeling rushed over me, too much for me in my weakened
condition. Dizzy, racked with sudden shooting pains, I closed my eyes;
and the happiness I embraced was all the sweeter for the suffering it
entailed. Something beat into my ears, into my brain, with the
regularity and rapid beat of pulsing blood--not too late! Not too late!
From that moment the ride grew different, even as I improved with leaps
and bounds. Sanderson behind us, the long gray barren between Sanderson
and the Rio Grande behind us, Del Rio for two days, where I was able to
sit up, all behind us--and the eastward trail to Uvalde before us! We
were the only passengers on the stage from Del Rio to Uvalde. Perhaps
Steele had so managed the journey. Assuredly he had become an individual
with whom traveling under the curious gaze of strangers would have been
embarrassing. He was most desperately in love. And Diane, all in a few
days, while riding these long, tedious miles, ordinarily so fatiguing,
had renewed her bloom, had gained what she had lost. She, too, was
desperately in love, though she remembered her identity occasionally,
and that she was in the company of a badly shot-up young man and a
broken-hearted cousin.
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