"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"--she puckered up her brows in a reflective way--"I've been thinking. It seems very strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't it seem so to you?" "Yes, it does, but that must be their reason." "I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his present one?" "Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at. "Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been changed?" "Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully, for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get proof of something crooked we might...." "Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted. They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized him. He let go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when, to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant. "Don't!" He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word. "What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely. "I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into a little smile. "I'll do it myself." "No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself; but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then. Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?" "I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...." "Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll probably find some other way anyhow." She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving her, as Shakespeare put it, to "Twice desire, ere it be day, That which with scorn she put away."