As he stood there,—­against the background of the primitive, many-colored landscape,—­the young man might easily have attracted the attention of any one.  He would have attracted attention in a crowd.  Tall, with an athletic trimness of limb, a good breadth of shoulder, and a fine head poised with that natural, unconscious pride of the well-bred—­he kept his feet on the unsteady platform of the car with that easy grace which marks only well-conditioned muscles, and is rarely seen save in those whose lives are sanely clean.

The Express had entered the yards at the summit station, and was gradually lessening its speed.  Just as the man turned to enter the car, the train came to a full stop, and the sudden jar threw him almost into the arms of the woman.  For an instant, while he was struggling to regain his balance, he was so close to her that their garments touched.  Indeed, he only prevented an actual collision by throwing his arm across her shoulder and catching the side of the car window against which she was leaning.

In that moment, while his face was so close to hers that she might have felt his breath upon her cheek and he was involuntarily looking straight into her eyes, the man felt, queerly, that the woman was not shrinking from him.  In fact, one less occupied with other thoughts might have construed her bold, open look, her slightly parted lips and flushed cheeks, as a welcome—­quite as though she were in the habit of having handsome young men throw themselves into her arms.

Then, with a hint of a smile in his eyes, he was saying, conventionally, “I beg your pardon.  It was very stupid of me.”

As he spoke, a mask of cold indifference slipped over her face.  Without deigning to notice his courteous apology, she looked away, and, moving to the railing of the platform, became ostensibly interested in the busy activity of the railroad yards.

Had the woman—­in that instant when his arm was over her shoulder and his eyes were looking into hers—­smiled, the incident would have slipped quickly from his mind.  As it was, the flash-like impression of the moment remained, and—­

Down the steep grade of the narrow San Timateo Canyon, on the coast side of the mountain pass, the Overland thundered on the last stretch of its long race to the western edge of the continent.  And now, from the car windows, the passengers caught tantalizing glimpses of bright pastures with their herds of contented dairy cows, and with their white ranch buildings set in the shade of giant pepper and eucalyptus trees.  On the rounded shoulders and steep flanks of the foothills that form the sides of the canyon, the barley fields looked down upon the meadows; and, now and then, in the whirling landscape winding side canyons—­beautiful with live-oak and laurel, with greasewood and sage—­led the eye away toward the pine-fringed ridges of the Galenas while above, the higher snow-clad peaks and domes of the San Bernardinos still shone coldly against the blue.