ould be done or not, something _must_ be
done.

"Don't leave me," she cried hysterically as he rushed off to reconnoitre
the vicinity.

"I'll return presently," he called back.

But five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and he did not
come back. Terror dried her tears, and her heart almost stopped beating.
She had quite given him up for lost, and herself too, when with
inexpressible relief she heard him call to her. She replied, and in a
moment more he was at her side, breathless with running.

"I lost my bearings," he said. "If you had not answered me I could not
have found you."

"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.

He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base,
contemptible to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did
not resist, and he did it again and again--I forbear to say how many
times.

"Isn't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed with a fine gush of
enthusiasm.

"Isn't it exquisite?" she echoed with a rush of sympathetic feeling.

"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he
cried.

"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely
mountain."

Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled
a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing
me this afternoon?"

"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted
smilingly.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Yes, sir: I meant to be all the time."

The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a
countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile
of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in
your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the
train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave
you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all
leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the
rejected lover."

"Poor fellow! so he shouldn't be left behind. He shall be conductor of
the train," she said with a bewitching laugh. His response was not
verbal.

"How cold the wind is!" she said.

"Shall I build you another wigwam?"

"No: let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,'
and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor
that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since
t