stone cropping out here. Now, in the blue limestone
of the Niagara period I was as sure of finding it as I am--"

"Of not finding me at all,"--it came queenly, haughtily from her.

He turned, and the thick lenses of his glasses were focused on her--a
radiant, superb being. Then there were swept away all his
abstractions and deductions, and in their place a real smile--a
lover's smile of satisfaction looking on the paradise of his dreams.

"You know I have always worshiped you," he said simply and
reverently.

She moved up in a sisterly way to him and looked into his face.

"Clay--Clay--but you must not--I have told you--I am engaged."

He did not appear to hear her. Already his mind was away off in the
hills where his eyes were. He went on: "Now, over there I struck a
stratum of rotten limestone--it's a curious thing. I traced that vein
of coal from Walker County--clear through the carboniferous period,
and it is bound to crop out somewhere in this altitude--bound to do
it."

"Now it's just this way," he said, taking her hand without being
conscious of it and counting off the periods with her fingers. "Here
is the carboniferous, the sub-carboniferous--" She jerked her hand
away with what would have been an amused laugh except that in a half
conscious way she remembered that Harry had held her hand but half an
hour ago; and it ended in a frigid shaft feathered with a smile--the
arrow which came from the bow of her pretty mouth.

He came to himself with a boyish laugh and a blush that made Helen
look at him again and watch it roll down his cheek and neck, under
the fine white skin there.

Then he looked at her closely again--the romantic face, the coil of
brown hair, the old gown of rich silk, the old-fashioned corsage and
the rich old gold necklace around her throat.

"If there's a queen on earth--it's you," he said simply.

He reddened again, and to divert it felt in his satchel and took out
a rock. Then he looked across at the hills again:

"If I do trace up that vein of coal and the iron which is needed with
it--when I do--for I know it is here as well as Leverrier knew that
Neptune was in our planetary system by the attraction exerted--when I
do--"

He looked at her again. He could not say the words. Real love has
ideas, but never words. It feels, but cannot speak. That which comes
out of the mouth, being words, is ever a poor substitute for that
which comes from the heart and is spirit.

"Clay," sh