concerning your evidently
rather long absence abroad is as to whether you went away to get or to
forget."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"Those are the two reasons for which young men go to Asia, are they
not?--to get something or to forget something. At least, so I have
been given to understand. Shall I go on?"

"Go on guessing, you mean? I don't seem able to prevent it."

"Then my third guess is this--and you know no one is ever allowed more
than three guesses." She hesitated; when she went on, she had entirely
dropped her tone of banter. "I guess, Mr. Eaton, that you have been--I
think, are still--going through some terrible experience which has
endured for a very long time--perhaps even for years--and has nearly
made of you and perhaps even yet may make of you something far
different and--and something far less pleasing than you--you must have
been before. There! I have transcended all bounds, said everything I
should not have said, and left unsaid all the conventional things which
are all that our short acquaintance could have allowed. Forgive
me--because I'm not sorry."

He made no answer. They walked as far as the rear of the train, turned
and came back before she spoke again:

"What is it they are doing to the front of our train, Mr. Eaton?"

He looked. "They are putting a plow on the engine."

"Oh!"

"That seems to be only the ordinary push-plow, but if what I have been
overhearing is correct, the railroad people are preparing to give you
one of the minor exhibitions of that everyday courage of which you
spoke this morning, Miss Dorne."

"In what particular way?"

"When we get across the Idaho line and into the mountains, you are to
ride behind a double-header driving a rotary snow-plow."

"A double-header? You mean two locomotives?"

"Yes; the preparation is warrant that what is ahead of us in the way of
travel will fully come up to anything you may have been led to expect."
They stood a minute watching the trainmen; as they turned, his gaze
went past her to the rear cars. "Also," he added, "Mr. Avery, with his
usual gracious pleasure at my being in your company, is hailing you
from the platform of your car."

She looked up at Eaton sharply, seemed about to speak, and then checked
what was upon her tongue. "You are going into your own car?" She held
out to him her small gloved hand. "Good-by, then--until we see one
another again."

"Good night, Miss Dorne."

He t