“I shouldn't apologize for that, if I were you,” she retorted. “It is well past apology, don't you think?” And then: “What is this one?” They had come to the last of the sketches, which was a rude map. It was penciled on the leaf of a memorandum, and Adams recognized it as the outline Winton had made and used in explaining the right-of-way entanglement. “It is a map,” he said; “one that Jack drew day before yesterday when he was trying to make me understand the situation up here. I wonder why he kept it? Is there anything on the other side?” She turned the leaf, and they both went speechless for the moment. The reverse of the scrap of cross-ruled paper held a very fair likeness of a face which Virginia's mirror had oftenest portrayed: a sketch setting forth in a few vigorous strokes of the pencil the impressionist's ideal of the “goddess fresh from the bath.” “By Jove!” exclaimed Adams, when he could find the word for his surprise. Then he tried to turn it off lightly. “There is a good bit more of the artist in Jack than I have been giving him credit for. Don't you know, he must have got the notion for that between two half-seconds--when you recognized me on the platform at Kansas City. It's wonderful!” “So very wonderful that I think I shall keep it,” she rejoined, not without a touch of austerity. Then she added: “Mr. Winton will probably never miss it. If he does, you will have to explain the best way you can.” And Adams could only say “By Jove!” again, and busy himself with pouring the tea which Ah Foo had brought in. In the nature of things the tea-drinking in the stuffy “dinkey” drawing-room was not prolonged. Time was flying. Virginia's errand of mercy was not yet accomplished, and Aunt Martha in her character of anxious chaperon was not to be forgotten. Also, Miss Carteret had a feeling that under his well-bred exterior Mr. Morton P. Adams was chafing like any barbarian industry captain at this unwarrantable intrusion and interruption. So presently they all forthfared into the sun-bright, snow-blinding, out-of-door world, and Virginia gathered up her courage and took her dilemma by the horns. “I believe I have seen everything now except that tent-place up there,” she asserted, groping purposefully for her opening. Adams called up another smile of acquiescence. “That is our telegraph office. Would you care to see it?” He was of those who shirk all or shirk nothing. “I don't know why I should care to, but I do,” she replied, with charming and childlike wilfulness; so the three of them trudged up the slippery path to the operator's den on the slope. Not to evade his hospitable duty in any part, Adams explained the use and need of a “front” wire, and Miss Carteret was properly interested. “How convenient!” she commented. “And you can come up here and talk to anybody you like--just as if it were a telephone?” “To anyone in the company's service,” amended Adams. “It is not a commercial wire.”