The graciousness and quiet of Washington, the spaciousness of the vast white station, the breadth and leisure of the streets, welcomed them like a presence. Here was something such as they had left at home—a sense of the ample. “Seems like there was room enough for two more here,” said the Inger contentedly, as they turned into the avenue. They chose to walk to find Lory’s aunt, lured by the large village aspect of the place. And as they walked, there leaped up for them from the roofs the insistent, dominant shaft of the monument. “Thanks be,” said the Inger. “There’s somethin’ to shin up. It begun to look to me like the East is a place where all the trails laid flat.” “I kind of like it here, though,” Lory said apologetically. “Seems like there’s more folks and their stuff, and less of God and his stuff,” the Inger offered after a pause. Lory shook her head. Her hair was in disorder, and the soot of the train filmed her face, but her look was strangely radiant. “I donno. I feel like there was lots of God around,” she said. She had waked the previous morning in the dimness of the coach and had found her head on his shoulder, his cheek on her hair, her hand in his hand. For a moment she lay still, remembering. Then she lifted her face slowly, lest she should waken him. But he was awake and smiled down at her, without moving, save that his clasp a little tightened. She struggled up, her flushed face still near his. “Your arm,” she said; “ain’t it near dead?” He sat quietly, and still smiling. “I give you my word,” he said, “I ain’t once thought of myself in connection with that arm’s dyin’.” “Did you sleep?” she demanded, anxiously. “I’m afraid,” he said ruefully, “I did—some.” Having thought of him, she began to think of herself. She sat erect, her hands busy at her hair, her face crimson. “Tell me something,” he said, and when she looked round at him: “did you care?” “Did I care—what?” she asked. He kept her eyes. “Did you?” he repeated. “I care about bein’ a whole lot of bother to you,” she answered gravely. “An’ I’m goin’ to pay for my own breakfast.” They breakfasted for the first time in the dining-car—both infinitely ill at ease, Lory confusedly ordering the first things on the card, the Inger indolently demanding flapjacks and bacon. And when they brought the bacon dry, he repudiated it, and asked gently if they thought he didn’t know how it was cooked or what?—ultimately securing, with the interested participation of the steward, a swimming dish of gravy. After that, Lory had slipped in a vacant seat on the other side of the car, and he had gone back to their own seat, and stared miserably out the window. He ought, he reflected, to have been showing her at every step of the way that he despised himself; and here instead he had made her ill at ease with him, afraid of him, eager to be away from him. That night, in the long dragging journey of their slow train, they had sat apart, as they had sat on the Overland.