He glanced suggestively round the big, brilliantly-lighted building, across the rows of citizens in broadcloth, and daintily-dressed women, and then turned and fixed his eyes upon his companion's face almost too steadily. The girl understood him, but she would not admit it. "You mean the music?" she said. "No. The music, to tell the truth, is by no means very good. It is you who have taken me back to the Old Country. Imagination will do a great deal, but it needs a fillip, and something tangible to build upon." Barbara laughed softly. "I fancy the C. P. R. and an Allan liner would be a much more reliable means of transportation. You will presumably take that route some day?" "I scarcely think it likely. They have, in the Western idiom, no use for poor men yonder." "Still, men get rich now and then in this country." The man's face grew momentarily a trifle grim. "It would apparently be difficult to accomplish it by serving as assistant survey, and the means employed by some of them might, if they went back to the old life, tend to prevent them feeling very comfortable. I"--and he paused for a second--"fancy that I shall stay in Canada." Barbara was a trifle puzzled, and said nothing further for a space, until when the singer who occupied the stage just then was dismissed, the man turned to her. "How long is a chance acquaintance warranted in presuming on a favor shown him in this country?" Barbara smiled at him. "If I understand you correctly, until the other person allows him to perceive that his absence would be supportable. In this case, just as long as it pleases him. Now you can tell me about the road-making." Brooke understood that she wished to hear, and when he could accomplish it without attracting too much attention, pictured for her benefit his life in the bush. He also did it humorously, but effectively, without any trace of the self-commiseration she watched for, and her fancy dwelt upon the hardships he lightly sketched. She knew how the toilers lived and worked in the bush, and had seen their reeking shanties and rain-swept camps. Labor is accounted honorable in that land, but it is none the less very frequently brutal as well as strenuous, and she could fancy how this man, who, she felt certain, had been accustomed to live softly in England, must have shrunk from some of his tasks, and picture to herself what he felt when he came back at night to herd close-packed with comrades whose thoughts and his must always be far apart. That many possibly better men had certainly borne with as hard a lot longer, after all, made no great difference to the facts. She also recognized that there was a vein of pathos in the story, as she remembered that he had told her it was scarcely likely he would ever go back to England again. That naturally suggested a good deal to her, for she held him blameless, though she knew it was not the regularity of their conduct at home which sent a good many of his countrymen out to Canada.