“It is a pretty veil,” said she.

“But your hair is prettier,” said he.

“And you embarrassed me very much by staring as you did, John Aldous!”

“Forgive me.  It is—­I mean you are—­so beautiful.”

“And you are sometimes—­most displeasing,” said she.  “Your ingenuousness, John Aldous, is shocking!”

“Forgive me,” he said again.

“And you have known me but two days,” she added.

“Two days—­is a long time,” he argued.  “One can be born, and live, and die in two days.  Besides, our trails have crossed for years.”

“But—­it displeases me.”

“What I have said?”

“Yes.”

“And the way I have looked at you?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was low and quiet now, her eyes were serious, and she was not smiling.

“I know—­I know,” he groaned, and there was a deep thrill in his voice.  “It’s been only two days after all, Ladygray.  It seems like—­like a lifetime.  I don’t want you to think badly of me.  God knows I don’t!”

“No, no.  I don’t,” she said quickly and gently.  “You are the finest gentleman I ever knew, John Aldous.  Only—­it embarrasses me.”

“I will cut out my tongue and put out my eyes——­”

“Nothing so terrible,” she laughed softly.  “Will you help me into the wagon?  They are coming.”

She gave him her hand, warm and soft; and Blackton forced him into the seat between her and Peggy, and Joanne’s hand rested in his arm all the way to the mountain that was to be blown up, and he told himself that he was a fool if he were not supremely happy.  The wagon stopped, and he helped her out again, her warm little hand again close in his own, and when she looked at him he was the cool, smiling John Aldous of old, so cool, and strong, and unemotional that he saw surprise in her eyes first, and then that gentle, gathering glow that came when she was proud of him, and pleased with him.  And as Blackton pointed out the mountain she unknotted the veil under her chin and let it drop back over her shoulders, so that the last light of the day fell richly in the trembling curls and thick coils of her hair.

“And that is my reward,” said John Aldous, but he whispered it to himself.

They had stopped close to a huge flat rock, and on this rock men were at work fitting wires to a little boxlike thing that had a white button-lever.  Paul Blackton pointed to this, and his face was flushed with excitement.

“That’s the little thing that’s going to blow it up, Miss Gray—­the touch of your finger on that little white button.  Do you see that black base of the mountain yonder?—­right there where you can see men moving about?  It’s half a mile from here, and the ‘coyote’ is there, dug into the wall of it.”