“Doubt it. Never can trust a girl to feed herself when she’s got anything better to do,” Rod corrected her. “I’ve provender in that basket you see at my feet; some pretty nifty sandwiches, fruit, candy, iced coffee, in a cold thermos. It will hold you alive till we get dinner. We’ll have one dinner, that I promise you! Ever hear of Pioneer Falls? They’re seventy miles from here, through as pretty a country as you’d ask for, and the falls are as good as they’re advertised to be. But the main consideration is that there’s a hotel there which sets up the best dinner I ever ate anywhere, and let me tell you I’ve knocked around some, and I’m a connoozer of food! So don’t you worry, Holly, that you’ll wither and fade away in my hands!” “Not a worry, Rod! I’m not afraid of what will happen to me in your hands,” Cis assured him with a gay little laugh, but her eyes expressed something remote from laughter. “By all that’s truthful, Cicely, if anything unhappy, or unfortunate ever came to you at my hands it would be because you would not let my hands work freely for your good,” Rodney said, with such emphasis that Cis looked startled, but he immediately added: “Our train’s made up, Holly: Let’s get our places; better than standing here.” He led her through the gates, his tickets ready in hand; selected seats on the shaded side, luckily the one which gave the better view of the country which they were to traverse; arranged her coat on a hook; had the porter bring a footstool to lay before her chair; settled himself; swung his own chair full in front of hers and sank back to gaze at her with eyes which needed no tongue to interpret them. Cis knew that the intimacy of this early journey, with all the world excluded from their consciousness, with its inevitable suggestion of other journeys, always together, especially of one other journey which this almost might be, so fast, so blissfully her heart was beating, Cis knew that it was to Rodney, as to herself, a new rapture, poignant, almost unbearably delicious in its present, and in its future promise. She knew as well as if he had spoken, that Rodney Moore loved her and intended to tell her so; to ask her to go with him on all his ways till death. She realized that this day was to be filled to overflowing with that tremulous, delicate bliss which preludes those unspoken words, when both man and woman know that they are to be spoken and how they will be answered, a bliss that almost surpasses the joy of full possession, as anticipation always must surpass fulfilment, the mystery of dawn be lovelier than the full noontide. “Shall we go to Niagara instead, Holly?” asked Rodney, bending toward her.