"I agreed to write a series of articles for an English magazine, and wished illustrations for one of the articles."
"How accomplished you are!" she exclaimed. "A mining engineer, a painter, an author—"
"Don't!" he protested, raising a deprecatory hand.
Having launched on the natural wonders of Arizona, he grew more and more eloquent, till Esther's imagination made a daring leap, and she looked down the gigantic gorge he pictured to her, over great acres of massive rock formation, like the splendor of successive day-dawns hardened into stone, and saw gigantic forms chiseled by ages of erosion.
"Do you ride horseback, Miss Bright?" he asked, suddenly changing the conversation.
"I am sorry to say that I do not. I do not even know how to mount."
"Let me teach you to ride," he said, with sudden interest.
"You would find me an awkward pupil," she responded, rising.
"I am willing to wager that I should not. When may I have the pleasure of giving you the first lesson?"
"Any time convenient for you when I am not teaching." She began to gather up her flowers and hat.