“It does have that appearance,” she assented, with a smile.  She kept him waiting with what would have looked like coquettish hesitation in another, while she glanced at the windows overhead, pierced by a skein of converging wires.  “Suppose I go up with you?”

“I should like that better,” he said; and she followed him lightly up the stairs that led to the telegraph office.  A young man stood at the machine with a cigar in his mouth, and his eyes intent upon the ribbon of paper unreeling itself before him.

“Just hold on,” he said to Libby, without turning his head.  “I’ve got something here for you.”  He read:  “Despatch received yesterday.  Coming right through.  George Maynard.”

“Good!” cried Libby.

“Dated Council Bluffs.  Want it written out?”

“No.  What ’s to pay?”

“Paid,” said the operator.

The laconically transacted business ended with this, the wire began to cluck again like the anxious hen whose manner the most awful and mysterious of the elements assumes in becoming articulate, and nothing remained for them but to come away.

“That was what I was afraid of,” said Libby.  “Maynard was at his ranch, and it must have been a good way out.  They’re fifty or sixty miles out, sometimes.  That would account for the delay.  Well, Mrs. Maynard doesn’t know how long it takes to come from Cheyenne, and we can tell her he’s on the way, and has telegraphed.”  They were walking rapidly down the street to the wharf where his boat lay.  “Oh!” he exclaimed, halting abruptly.  “I promised to send you back by land, if you preferred.”

“Has the wind fallen?”

“Oh, no.  We shall have a good breeze:” 

“I won’t put you to the trouble of getting a horse.  I can go back perfectly well in the boat.”

“Well, that’s what I think,” he said cheerily.

She did not respond, and he could not be aware that any change had come over her mood.  But when they were once more seated in the boat, and the sail was pulling in the fresh breeze, she turned to him with a scarcely concealed indignation.  “Have you a fancy for experimenting upon people, Mr. Libby?”

“Experimenting?  I?  I don’t know in the least what you mean!”

“Why did you tell me that the operator was a woman?”

“Because the other operator is,” he answered.

“Oh!” she said, and fell blankly silent.

“There is a good deal of business there.  They have to have two operators,” he explained, after a pause.

“Why, of course,” she murmured in deep humiliation.  If he had suffered her to be silent as long as she would, she might have offered him some reparation; but he spoke.

“Why did you think I had been experimenting on you?” he asked.

“Why?” she repeated.  The sense of having put herself in the wrong exasperated her with him.  “Oh, I dare say you were curious.  Don’t you suppose I have noticed that men are puzzled at me?  What did you mean by saying that you thought I would be equal to anything?”