She adroitly led him to talk of himself.  He told her naively of New York and tennis, of brake parties and clubs, and even afternoon teas and balls, all of which, of course, interested a Western girl exceedingly.  In this it so happened that his immaturity showed more plainly than before.  He did not boast openly, but he introduced extraneous details important in themselves.  He mentioned knowing Pennington the painter, and Brookes the writer, merely in a casual fashion, but with just the faintest flourish.  It somehow became known that his family had a crest, that his position was high; in short, that he was a de Laney on both sides.  He liked to tell it to this girl, because it was evidently fresh and new to her, and because in the presence of her inexperience in these matters he gained a confidence in himself which he had never dared assume before.

She looked straight in front of her and listened, throwing in a comment now and then to assist the stream of his talk.  At last, when he fell silent, she reached swiftly out and patted his cheek with her hand.

“You are a dear big boy,” she said quietly.  “But I like it—­oh, so much!”

From the tree tops below the clear warble of the purple finch proclaimed that under the fronds twilight had fallen.  The vast green surface of the hills was streaked here and there with irregular peaks of darkness dwindling eastward.  The sun was nearly down.

A sudden gloom blotted out the fretwork of the pine shadows that had, during the latter part of the afternoon, lain athwart the rock.  They looked up startled.

The shadow of Harney had crept out to them, and, even as they looked, it stole on, cat-like, across the lower ridges toward the East.  One after another the rounded hills changed hue as it crossed them.  For a moment it lingered in the tangle of woods at the outermost edge, and then without further pause glided out over the prairie.  They watched it fascinated.  The sparkle was quenched in the Cheyenne; the white gleam of the Bad Lands became a dull gray, scarce distinguishable from the gray of the twilight.  Though a single mysterious cleft a long yellow bar pointed down across the plains, paused at the horizon, and slowly lifted into the air.  The mountain shadow followed it steadily up into the sky, growing and growing against the dullness of the east, until at last over against them in the heavens was the huge phantom of a mountain, infinitely greater, infinitely grander than any mountain ever seen by mortal eyes, and lifting higher and higher, commanded upward by that single wand of golden light.  Then suddenly the wand was withdrawn and the ghost mountain merged into the yellow afterglow of evening.

The girl had watched it breathless.  At its dissolution she seized the young man excitedly by the arm.

“The Spirit Mountain!” she cried.  “I have never seen it before; and now I see it—­with you.”

She looked at him with startled eyes.