lly he
was about to suggest.

"A ride to the pass and a view of the sunset from the very top!" he
cried. He looked down at her quickly, and all the force of the call he
had transformed into a sunny, personal appeal, which made her avert her
glance. "My day in the country--my holiday, if you will go with me! Will
you, and gaze out over that spot of green in the glare of the desert,
knowing that a little of it is mine?"

"Your orange-trees are too young. It's so far away they will hardly
show," she ventured, surveying the distance to the pass judicially.

"Will you?"

"Why, to me a ride to the pass is not a thing to be planned a day
beforehand," she said deliberately, still studiously observing Galeria.
"It is a matter of momentary inspiration. Make it a set engagement and it
is but a plodding journey. I can best tell in the morning," she
concluded. "And, by the way, I see you haven't yet tried grafting plums
on the alfalfa stalks."

"No. I have learned better. It is not consistent. You see, you mow
alfalfa and you pick plums."

This return to drollery, in keeping with the prescribed order of their
relations, made her look up in candid amusement over the barrier which
for a moment he had been endangering.

"Honestly, Jack, you do improve," she said, with mock encouragement. "You
seem to have mastered a number of the simple truths of age-old
agricultural experience."

"But will you? Will you ride to the pass?"

He had the question launched fairly into her eyes. She could not escape
it. He saw one bright flash, whether of real anger or simply vexation at
his reversion to the theme he could not tell, and her lashes dropped;
she ran the leaf edges of the austere Marcus back and forth in her
fingers, thip-thip-thip. That was the only sound for some seconds, very
long seconds.

"As I've already tried to make clear to you, it's such a businesslike
thing to ride to the pass unless you have the inspiration," she remarked
thoughtfully to Marcus. "Perhaps I shall get the inspiration on the way
back to the house;" which was a signal that she was going. "And, by the
way, Jack, to return to the object of my coming, if you have ideas of
your own about flowers incorporate them; that is the way to develop your
floricultural talent."

She turned away, but he followed. He was at her side and proceeding with
her, his head bent toward her, boyishly, eagerly.

"You see, I have never been out to the pass," he remarked urgently.