"I cannot realize the glorious truth of it all--that I am to come soon and claim you and bring you back here as my wife," said Lowell. "Say it all over again for me." He was standing with both arms about her and with her face uptilted to his. No doubt other men and women had stood thus on this glacier-wrought promontory--lovers from cave and tepee. "It is all true," Helen answered, "but I must admit that the responsibilities of being an Indian agent's wife seem alarming. The thought of there being so much to do among these people makes me afraid that I shall not be able to meet the responsibilities." "You'll be bothered every day with Indians--men, women, and babies. You'll hear the thumping of their moccasined feet every hour of the day. They'll overrun your front porch and seek you out in the sacred precincts of your kitchen, mostly about things that are totally inconsequential." "But think of the work in its larger aspects--the good that there is to be done." Lowell smiled at her approvingly. "That's the way you have to keep thinking all the time. You have to look beyond the mass of detail in the foreground--past all the minor annoyances and the red tape and the seeming ingratitude. You've got to figure that you're there to supply the needed human note--to let these people understand that this Government of ours is not a mere machine with the motive power at Washington. You've got to feel that you've been sent here to make up for the indifference of the outside world--that the kiddies out in those ramshackle cabins and cold tepees are not going to be lonely, and suffer and die, if you can help it. You've got to feel that it's your help that's going to save the feeble and sick--sometimes from their own superstitions. There's no reason why we can't in time get a hospital here for Indians, like Fire Bear, who have tuberculosis. We're going to save Fire Bear, and we can save others. And then there are the school-children, with lonely hours that can be lightened, and with work to be found for them in the big world after they have learned the white man's tasks. But there are going to be heartaches and disillusionments for a woman. A man can grit his teeth and smash through some way, unless he sinks back into absolute indifference as a good many Indian agents do. But a woman--well, dear, I dread to think of your embarking on a task which is at once so alluring and so endless and thankless." Helen put her hand on his lips. "With you helping me, no task can seem thankless." "Well, then, this is our kingdom of work," said Lowell, with a sweep of his sombrero which included the vast reservation which smiled so inscrutably at them. "There's every human need to be met out there in all that bigness. We'll face it together--and we'll win!"