"I never tell stories," he answered, goaded to open irritation, "on Sunday or any other day. You know I would have liked to come with you and Byron could have--have----" "What?" the branch upright in her hand. "Gone to the devil!" "David!" in horror, "I never thought _you'd_ talk that way." She gave the branch a shake and a shower of drops fell on him. "There, that's to cool your anger. For I see you're angry though I haven't got the least idea what it's about." He made no answer, wounded by her lack of understanding. She moved the rose spray against her face, inhaling its fragrance, and watching him through the leaves. After a moment she said with a questioning inflection: "You were angry?" He gave her a quick glance, met her eyes, shining between the duller luster of the leaves, and suddenly dumb before their innocent provocation, turned his head away. The sense of his disturbance trembled on the air and Susan's smile died. She dropped the branch, trailing it lightly across the water, and wondering at the confusion that had so abruptly upset her self-confident gayety. Held in inexplicable embarrassment she could think of nothing to say. It was he who broke the silence with a change of subject: "In a few days more we'll be at the Platte. When we started that seemed as if it was half the journey, didn't it?" "We'll get there just about a month from the time we left Independence. Before we started I thought a month out of doors this way would be like a year. But it really hasn't seemed long at all. I suppose it's because I've enjoyed it so." This again stirred him. Was there any hope that his presence might have been the cause of some small fraction of that enjoyment? He put out a timid feeler: "I wonder why you enjoyed it. Perhaps Leff and I amused you a little." It was certainly a humble enough remark, but it caused a slight stiffening and withdrawal in the young girl. She instinctively felt the pleading for commendation and resented it. It was as if a slave, upon whose neck her foot rested, were to squirm round and recommend himself to her tolerance. David, trying to extort from her flattering admissions, roused a determination to keep the slave with his face in the dust. "I just like being out of doors," she said carelessly. "And it's all the more odd as I was always wanting to hurry on and catch up the large train." This was a grinding in of the heel. The large train into which the Gillespies were to be absorbed and an end brought to their independent journeying, had at first loomed gloomily before David's vision. But of late it had faded from the conversation and his mind. The present was so good it must continue, and he had come to accept that first bright dream of his in which he and Susan were to go riding side by side across the continent as a permanent reality. His timidity was swept away in a rush of stronger feeling and he sat erect, looking sharply at her: