He threw himself back in his chair, transformed once more into the talkative, agreeable person that Europe knew.  His black and grizzled hair, falling perpetually forward in strong waves, made a fine frame for his grey eyes and large, well-cut features.  He had a slight stammer, which increased when he was animated, and a trick of forever pushing back the troublesome front locks of hair.

Elizabeth listened for a long, long time, and at last—­could have cried like a baby because she was missing so much!  There was a chance, she knew, all along this portion of the line, of seeing antelope and coyotes, if only one kept one’s eyes open; not to speak of the gophers—­enchanting little fellows, quite new to such travellers as she—­who seemed to choose the very railway line itself, by preference, for their burrowings and their social gatherings.  Then, as she saw, the wheat country was nearly done; a great change was in progress; her curiosity sprang to meet it.  Droves of horses and cattle began to appear at rare intervals on the vast expanse.  No white, tree-sheltered farms here, like the farms in Manitoba; but scattered at long distances, near the railway or on the horizon, the first primitive dwellings of the new settlers—­the rude “shack” of the first year—­beginnings of villages—­sketches of towns.

“I have always thought the Etruscan problem the most fascinating in the whole world,” cried Delaine, with pleasant enthusiasm.  “When you consider all its bearings, linguistic and historical—­”

“Oh! do you see,” exclaimed Elizabeth, pointing—­“do you see all those lines and posts, far out to the horizon?  Do you know that all these lonely farms are connected with each other and the railway by telephones?  Mr. Anderson told me so; that some farmers actually make their fences into telephone lines, and that from that little hut over there you can speak to Montreal when you please?  And just before I left London I was staying in a big country house, thirty miles from Hyde Park Corner, and you couldn’t telephone to London except by driving five miles to the nearest town!”

“I wonder why that should strike you so much—­the telephones, I mean?”

Delaine’s tone was stiff.  He had thrown himself back in his chair with folded arms, and a slight look of patience.  “After all, you know, it may only be one dull person telephoning to another dull person—­on subjects that don’t matter!”

Elizabeth laughed and coloured.

“Oh! it isn’t telephones in themselves.  It’s—­” She hesitated, and began again, trying to express herself.  “When one thinks of all the haphazard of history—­how nations have tumbled up, or been dragged up, through centuries of blind horror and mistake, how wonderful to see a nation made consciously!—­before your eyes—­by science and intelligence—­everything thought of, everything foreseen!  First of all, this wonderful railway, driven across these deserts, against opposition, against unbelief, by a handful of men, who risked everything, and have—­perhaps—­changed the face of the world!”