at her side, breathless with running.

"I lost my bearings," he said. "If you had not answered me, I could not
have found you."

"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.

He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base,
contemptible, to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she
did not resist, and he did it again and again,--I forbear to say how
many times.

"Is n't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed, with a fine gush
of enthusiasm.

"Is n't it exquisite?" she echoed, with a rush of sympathetic feeling.

"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he
cried.

"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely
mountain."

Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled
a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing
me this afternoon?"

"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted
smilingly.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Yes, sir; I meant to be all the time."

The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a
countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile
of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in
your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the
train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave
you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all
leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the
rejected lover."

"Poor fellow! so he should n't be left behind. He shall be conductor
of the train," she said, with a bewitching laugh. His response was not
verbal.

"How cold the wind is!" she said.

"Shall I build you another wigwam?"

"No; let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,'
and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor
that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since
the creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we
get home. Come, let's dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore."

They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a
patch of hard, bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard
puckered his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much
enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round,
to and fro, they swept until, laughing, flushed,