herwise you would not have come? How magnificently churlish you can
be, upon occasion, Howard!"

"It doesn't deserve so hard a name," he rejoined patiently. "For the
moment I am your father's guest, and when he asked me to go to Angels
with him----"

--"He didn't tell you that mamma and Judge Holcombe and Carolyn and
Miriam and Herbert and Geof. Jefferis and I were along," she cut in
maliciously. "Howard, don't you know you are positively spiteful, at
times!"

"No," he denied.

"Don't contradict me, and don't be silly." She pushed the other chair
toward him. "Sit down and tell me how you've been enduring the interval.
It is more than a year, isn't it?"

"Yes. A year, three months, and eleven days." He had taken the chair
beside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.

"How mathematically exact you are!" she gibed. "To-morrow it will be a
year, three months, and twelve days; and the day after to-morrow--mercy
me! I should go mad if I had to think back and count up that way every
day. But I asked you what you had been doing."

He spread his hands. "Existing, one way and another. There has always
been my work."

"'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,'" she quoted. "You are
excessively dull to-day, Howard. Hasn't it occurred to you?"

"Thank you for expressing it so delicately. It seems to be my
misfortune to disappoint you, always."

"Yes," she said, quite unfeelingly. Then, with a swift relapse into pure
mockery: "How many times have you fallen in love during the one year,
three months, and eleven days?"

His frown was almost a scowl. "Is it worth while to make an unending
jest of it, Eleanor?"

"A jest?--of your falling in love? No, my dear cousin, several times
removed, no one would dare to jest with you on that subject. But tell
me; I am really and truly interested. Will you confess to three times?
That isn't so very many, considering the length of the interval."

"No."

"Twice, then? Think hard; there must have been at least two little
quickenings of the heartbeats in all that time."

"No."

"Still no? That reduces it to one--the charming Miss Dawson----"

"You might spare her, even if you are not willing to spare me. You know
well enough there has never been any one but you, Eleanor; that there
never will be any one but you."

The train was passing the western confines of the waterless tract, and a
cool breeze from the snowcapped Timanyonis was sweeping across the open
platf