The colour was still in her face, and her air was uncertain, disturbed.  But at his words, so palpably sincere and self condemnatory, she began to smile.

“Perhaps—­if we just forget——­”

The smouldering fire in his eyes flared suddenly.

“Forget?  I’ll never forget that minute, those kisses,” he exclaimed.  “Hanged if I want to, or will!”

“If, then, we don’t repeat them, and are more circumspect, why, I’ll overlook it,” she said, a little confusedly.  “I know you meant no discourtesy.”  He gave a savage shake of his head.  “And Imogene and I both prize your friendship.”

“Thank you, Ruth.  You take an awful load off my heart.”

She glanced up at him, now once more composed.  Her eyes gleamed with a veiled impishness.

“No girl ever died from being kissed.  But what a splendid lover you would make!” Away she darted a few steps, to whirl and point and waggle a finger at the dumfounded youth.  “Are you coming?  Because I don’t consider this a wise place to be with a flighty, irresponsible man, first name Lee.  Besides, it’s beginning to grow dark in here.”

Bryant joined her.  The glow was still in his eyes, but in all other respects he was his usual self, calm, collected.  Together they went down the cool, dim canon, with its honey scent of flowers drifting with them; and though they talked lightly of things of no importance, there was a little smile on the lips of each and sometimes their eyes met, as if sharing a new, sweet intimacy.

Thereafter, frequent as were Lee’s calls at Sarita Creek of evenings, he seldom had Ruth to himself and on more than one occasion had to share her company with Charlie Menocal, much to his impatience.  When Imogene sometimes succeeded in detaining the fellow at her side, Bryant silently gave her unutterable thanks.  And Ruth seemed day by day more receptive to his passion.

“I think of only two things, my canal and you,” he declared to her one night.

“When you put me first and the canal second, why, who knows what I may think then?” she said, tantalizingly.  “But to esteem an irrigation ditch before me, the idea!  What if you had to choose between us?” And she continued thus to tease him, fanning the fires hotter in his breast.

By the end of August Bryant had completed the survey of the canal line down to a point where it touched the northern boundary of the ranch, tapping the latter’s system of distributing ditches.  Pinas River, Perro Creek, and the tract to be watered were thus united.  Though later, doubtless, it would be necessary to make minor corrections, as always, the surveying was finished.  One tracing showed the entire irrigation scheme from the dam on the Pinas to the tips of the laterals branching out in a gridiron over the land.  There were other tracings, too, on a larger scale and of successive sections, ready to be taken to Kennard in order to make blueprints.