In the smoking-room Adams was making up for the cigars he had denied himself during the day.  He moved about restlessly, possessed by an intense desire to get out of doors and walk fast and far.  His mind was filled by a galloping troop of vivid memories—­a pair of bright, dark-lashed gray eyes, the sound of a low, clear laugh, the turn of a rosy cheek, an opinion which had interested him, a pretty thought, a way she had of smiling appealingly after she had said something whimsical or perverse.  And underlying and overlying and penetrating through all these was an irritated consciousness of the fact that it would be a long time until the next day.

Dr. Black looked out the next morning on the wide, forlorn plains of western Kansas, with her heart as flooded with happiness as they were with sunshine.  A luxurious sense of power throbbed in her veins as she smiled a good-morning to Adams across the aisle.  He came at once to ask how she had slept, and if she was beginning to feel the journey wearisome.  Close upon the heels of her thrilling sense of gladness and mastery came the feminine instinct of concealment, and presently Adams began to notice in her manner a suggestion of reserve.  There was certainly a difference, he said to himself, a little lessening of the frank comradeship she had shown toward him the day before.  He wondered if he bored her, if he had shown too much desire for her society.  He went away to the smoking car, where he fidgeted about, began a cigar, threw it out of the window, and in ten minutes was back again with a book he had fished out of his travelling-bag, asking if Miss Black had read it and, if not,—­would she like to take it for a while?

It was Lubbock’s “Pleasures of Life.”  No, Elizabeth had not read it, but she had read Lubbock’s book on ants, bees, and wasps, and she began to tell him about it, forgetting in the pleasure of companionship the consciousness which a little while before had veiled her manner.  He followed with some stories about the tarantula and tarantula hawk which he had seen while on a professional trip in the Southwest.  And so they wandered on, through talk about insects and animals, back to the book which lay on Elizabeth’s lap.  He took it up and read to her a page here and there, and soon they were talking earnestly about the varied ideals that are possible to the young and ambitious.

Adams had not tried again, since their second conversation, to find out her vocation.  His pleasure in her society had driven all thought of it from his mind.  He had even forgotten that he had ever supposed her to have a profession.  Elizabeth had said nothing about her work, at first from whimsical perversity.  But this morning, as they talked, a definite desire crept into her mind that he should not know.

“I shall not tell him I am a physician,” she thought.  “It’s not much longer, and for this little while I want to be just a mere woman.”