Chapter XIII. A Day in September

A September day in Alberta. There is no other day to be compared to it in any other month or in any other land. Other lands have their September days, and Alberta has days in other months, but the combination of September day in Alberta is sui generis. The foothill country with plain, and hill, and valley, and mighty mountain, laced with stream, and river, and lake; the over-arching sheet of blue with cloud shapes wandering and wistful, the kindly sun pouring its genial sheen of yellow and gold over the face of the earth below, purple in the mountains and gold and pearly grey, and all swimming in air blown through the mountain gorges and over forests of pine, tingling with ozone and reaching the heart and going to the head like new wine--these things go with a September day in Alberta.

And like new wine the air seemed to Jack Romayne as the Packard like a swallow skimmed along the undulating prairie trail, smooth, resilient, of all the roads in the world for motor cars the best. For that day at least and in that motor car life seemed good to Jack Romayne. Not many such days would be his, and he meant to take all it gave regardless of cost. His sister's proposal to call at the Gwynnes' house he would have rejected could he have found a reasonable excuse. The invitation to the Gwynne girls to accompany them on their shoot he resented also, and still more deeply he resented the arrangement of the party that set Kathleen next to him, a close fit in the back seat of the car. But at the first feeling of her warm soft body wedged closely against him, all emotions fled except one of pulsating joy. And this, with the air rushing at them from the western mountains, wrought in him the reckless resolve to take what the gods offered no matter what might follow. As he listened to the chatter about him he yielded to the intoxication of his love for this fair slim girl pressing soft against his arm and shoulder. He allowed his fancy to play with surmises as to what would happen should he turn to her and say, "Dear girl, do you know how fair you are, how entrancingly lovely? Do you know I am madly in love with you, and that I can hardly refrain from putting this arm, against which you so quietly lean your warm soft body, about you?" He looked boldly at the red curves of her lips and allowed himself to riot in the imagination of how deliciously they would yield to his pressed against them. "My God!" he cried aloud, "to think of it."

The two ladies turned their astonished eyes upon him. "What is it, Jack? Wait, Tom. Have you lost something?"

"Yes, that is, I never had it. No, go on, Tom, it cannot be helped now. Go on, please do. What a day it is!" he continued. "'What a time we are having,' as Miss Nora would say."

"Yes, what a time!" exclaimed Nora, turning her face toward them. "Mrs. Waring-Gaunt, I think I must tell you that your husband is