sly you called it the 'city.' But
is it as wonderful, now? Hasn't familiarity with real bigness dimmed
its wonder a little?"

For the first time that day his attitude was frankly challenging.

"Maybe," he agreed, "maybe! And maybe I like it better than ever, for
the others I've seen!" He frowned and shook his head. "I'm quite
likely to stick to first conclusions," he finished, "and your inference
is basically wrong. I do not need to look at other women to make me
surer of the wonder of you. A man doesn't have to live in a desert all
his life to know what thirst is, you know. And it's not bad--not bad
as cities go!"

As they had begun the morning they now finished it, on a plane of
thorough comradeship which years and years alone cannot achieve.

"Not bad," she echoed throatily. "Not bad, at all! It's marvelous
too, how towns and people and--and things in general can improve, once
they awake to their own importance in the scheme of things, isn't it?"

Quite on a mutual impulse they clasped hands and laughed into each
other's eyes; quite unnecessarily it may have appeared to the small
group on the veranda of the stucco and timber place halfway down the
slope between them and town. And there on the crest of the hill,
suddenly conscious of those eyes, the girl drew back as swiftly as she
had swung toward him.

"What in the world will they think!" she breathed. "I've been gone
since daybreak, without saying a word that I was going. And it must be
noon by now. Come--no, don't hurry! It's too late to hurry now!"

Her chin came up; the line of her lips lost its soft fullness. It was
his hot face which made her aware of how surely her imperiously quick
orders had stung him. Then she was back, knee to knee, at his side.

"That wasn't fair," she said. "That was most unfair, to me. You
didn't think, did you, that I----"

His interruption surprised her.

"If I shouldn't inquire," he asked, "will you please tell me so, and
forget I asked the question? May I know when you--you and Mr.
Wickersham are to be----"

Barbara's face went slowly crimson, flushed to the nape of her neck.

"It's not a certainty yet, the date," she answered kindly. "Just late
in the spring, I think."

He nodded. Again she knew how wholly unreadable his eyes could be.

"Late in the spring," he repeated, so softly that he might have been
talking to himself. "Late in the spring I'll have two time limits run
out on me."

Wic