There is one ditch out of which the most persistent and gladsome mocker may not drive his victim, and that is the ditch of silence.  Blount said nothing.  Nevertheless, Gantry tried once more.

“Not interested, Evan?”

Blount turned and looked his companion coldly in the eyes.

“Not in the slightest degree, Dick.  Will you take that for your answer now, and remember it hereafter?”

“Sure,” laughed the railroad man.  And then, to round out the forbidden topic by adding worse to bad:  “I didn’t know it was a sore spot with you.  How should I know?  But, as I say, you’ll have to reckon with her sooner or later, and—­”

“Let’s talk of something else,” snapped Blount.

Gantry found a match and relighted his cigar.  When he began again he was still thinking of the “apron-string” clause in the senator’s telegram.

“I can’t understand how any man with Western blood in his veins could ever be content to marry and settle down in this over-civilized neck of woods,” he remarked, looking down upon the parked automobiles and around at the country-club evidences of the civilization.

“Can’t you?” smiled Blount, with large lenience.  One of the things the civilization had done for him was to make him good-naturedly tolerant of the crudeness of the outlander.

“No, I can’t,” asserted the Westerner.  Then he added:  “Of course, I don’t know the Eastern young woman even by sight.  She may be all that is lovely, desirable, and enticing—­if a man could hope to live long enough to get really well acquainted with her.”

“She is,” declared Blount, with the air of one who had lived quite long enough to know.

Once more Gantry was putting two and two together.  Blount’s determination to go West and grow up with the country—­his father’s country—­was apparently a very sudden one.  Had the decision turned entirely upon the senator’s telegram?  Gantry, wise in his generation, thought not.

“You say that as if you’d been taking a few lessons,” he laughed.  Then, with the friendly impudence which only a college comradeship could excuse:  “Is she here to-night?”

“No,” said Blount, unguardedly making the response which admitted so much more than it said.

“Tell me about her,” Gantry begged.  “I don’t often read a love story, but I like to hear ’em.”

If it had been any one but Gantry, Blount would probably have had a sharp attack of reticence, with outward symptoms unmistakable to the dullest.  But the time, the surroundings, and the exceeding newness of Patricia’s “No” combined to break down the barriers of reserve.

“There isn’t much to tell, Dick,” he began half humorously, half in ill-concealed self-pity.  “I’ve known her for a year, and I’ve loved her from the first day.  That is Chapter One; and Chapter Two ends the story with one small word.  She says ‘No.’”

“The dickens she does!” said Gantry, in hearty sympathy.  Then:  “But that’s a good sign, isn’t it?  Haven’t I heard somewhere that they always say ‘No’ at first?”