A mysterious, clotted haze of gray and blue and smoke smudges, shot with rose and deeper tints of carmine; a churning of white foam in an oily sweep of undulating water that caught the lights from the sunset so that they swam through a magic floating world; screaming gulls flapping close, their pink legs hanging straight down like little sticks; bellowing boat whistles, deep siren blasts, pricking lights in the haze. With frankly confessed eagerness, Doris stood with Bill in the bow of the ferry and gazed enraptured, her face pallid with emotion. Bill looked down at her, knew himself forgotten in that moment of blissful arrival into her dream world. A vague hurt, a slow understanding, sobered his face as he watched her. Then, like a blow that forces open a door, Bill saw. There, mirrored in her eyes, on the tremulous lips, glowing through the pallor of her cheeks, was a joy, an incredulous rapture such as he himself had known, not once, but many times in the past weeks. Doris was trying to feel the reality of a dream come true. Bill remembered poignantly how he had struggled to express that emotion, and the paucity of words that had held him dumb. He had felt it when his lips first touched the lips of Doris; when she had said that she loved him. Doris--why, Doris had wanted to talk about the gold, about whatever came into her mind. Things, other than their love, could claim her thoughts, while she stood abashed before the miracle. He had thought that Doris was different. She didn't show her feelings much; women were shy about love. It never occurred to him to question the depth of her love until that moment. "Why didn't she have that look in her eyes--_then_?" he thought sharply. He had never seen just this look in her face; no, nor anything approaching that look. There was an answer, but Bill shut his mind against it. And then, as if a devil had prompted the words, Doris turned and spoke a sentence which Bill recognized. "I was always scared to dream I'd ever actually be here," she said, and her voice was hushed. "Oh, Bill-dear, I'm so happy my heart just _aches_!" "Are you, honey?" Bill bit his lips and hid something away where even his own heart must never find it. She had elaborated on his broken speech there at Parowan Number One, but Bill set that down to a more versatile vocabulary. He too had been so happy his heart had ached; but he had not been able to find those words to say. Desert tan and mail-order trousseau hurt her pride terribly. She insisted upon a quiet hotel until the defects could be remedied but Bill only laughed at her vanity. He could call it that now, though he loved the trait,--since he could gratify it.