While waiting for our coffee I took from my valise a bracelet of silver, a broad band shaped and ornamented by some Navajo silversmith. "Hold out your arm," I commanded. She obeyed, and I clasped the barbaric gyve about her wrist. "That is a sign of your slavery," I said gravely. Smilingly, meditatively, she fingered it, realizing dimly the grim truth which ran beneath my jesting. She was about to take on a relationship which must inevitably bring work and worry as well as joy. (That silver band has never left her wrist for a moment. For twenty-two years she has worn it, keeping it bright with service for me, for her children and for her friends. There is something symbolic in the fact that it has never lost its clear luster and that it has never tarnished the arm it adorns.) Her joy in this present, her astonishment at my unexpected appearance on the railway platform, amused and delighted me. I could scarcely convince her that at six o'clock on Saturday night I was in a New Mexico town, waiting for the eastern express. It was all a piece of miraculous adventure on my part, but her evident pleasure in its successful working out made me rich--and very humble. "What did you do it for?" she asked; then, with a look of dismay, she added, "What am I going to do with you in Hanover?" "I think I can find something to do," I answered, and entered upon a detailed statement of my plan. "I want you to see the mountains. We'll set our wedding day for the eighteenth--that will give us a week in Colorado, and enable us to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the old folks at the homestead. You say you have never seen a real mountain--well, here's your chance! Say the word, and I'll take you into the heart of the San Juan Range. I'll show you the splendors of Ouray and the Uncompagre." Holding the floor, in order that she might not have a chance to protest, I spread an alluring panorama of peaks and valleys before her eyes, with an eloquence which I intended should overcome every objection. That she was giving way to my appeal was evident. Her negatives, when they came, were rather feeble. "I can't do it. It would be lovely, but--oh, it is impossible!" "It is done--it is arranged!" I replied. "I have already sent for the railway tickets. They will be at your home to-morrow night. All is settled. We are to be married on the eighteenth, and----" "But our cards are all in Chicago and printed for the twenty-third!" "What of that? Get some more--or, better still, forget 'em! We don't need cards." "But--my sewing?" "Never mind your sewing. Would you let a gown come between you and a chance to see the Needle Peak? I am determined that you shall see Ouray, Red Mountain, and the San Juan Divide." At last she said, "I'll think about it."