She was greatly excited when O’Neil announced one evening: 

“I’m ready to make that trip to the front, if you are.  I have business at Kyak; so after we’ve seen the glaciers we will go down there and you can take in the coal-fields.”

“How long shall we be gone?”

“Ten days, perhaps.  We’ll start in the morning.”

“I’m ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

“Then perhaps you’d better help Natalie.”

“Natalie!” exclaimed Eliza, seeing all her well-laid plans tottering.  “Is she going?”

“Oh yes!  It’s an opportunity she shouldn’t miss, and I thought it would be pleasanter for you if she went with us.”

Eliza was forced to acknowledge his thoughtfulness, although it angered her to be sacrificed to the proprieties.  Her newspaper training had made her feel superior to such things, and this of all occasions was one upon which she would have liked to be free of mere conventions.  But of course she professed the greatest delight.

O’Neil had puzzled her greatly of late; for at times he seemed wrapped up in Natalie, and at other times he actually showed a preference for Eliza’s own company.  He was so impartial in his attentions that at one moment the girl would waver in her determination and in the next would believe herself succeeding beyond her hope.  The game confused her emotions curiously.  She accused herself of being overbold, and then she noted with horror that she was growing as sensitive to his apparent coldness as if she were really in earnest.  She had not supposed that the mere acting of a sentimental role could so obsess her.

To counteract this tendency she assumed a very professional air when they set out on the following morning.  She was once more Eliza Appleton the reporter, and O’Neil, in recognition of this fact, explained rapidly the difficulties of construction which he had met and overcome.  As she began to understand there came to her a fuller appreciation of the man and the work he was doing.  Natalie, however, could not seem to grasp the significance of the enterprise.  She saw nothing beyond the even gravel road-bed, the uninteresting trestles and bridges and cuts and fills, the like of which she had seen many times before, and her comment was childlike.  O’Neil, however, appeared to find her naivete charming, and Eliza reflected bitterly: 

“If my nose was perfectly chiseled and my eyebrows nice, he wouldn’t care if my brain was the size of a rabbit’s.  Here am I, talking like a human being and really understanding him, while she sits like a Greek goddess, wondering if her hat is on straight.  If ever I find a girl uglier than I am I’ll make her my bosom friend.”  She jabbed her pencil viciously at her notebook.