"You picked them!" exclaimed the girl softly, turning toward him as he came and stood near her. "And I never even thought of it! How could you think of it! I had supposed only women thought of those things—were expected to think of them, I mean," she added hastily. "You make me wonder what——"
He looked at her curiously.
"Make you wonder what?" he asked in his quiet, well modulated voice.
A flush came over her face. Her eyes shifted from his until they rested upon the grave at her feet. The breeze threw a loose strand of dark hair across one eye. She rapidly drew her hand over her forehead, putting it away from her vision, then looked full and straight at the man beside her.
"I beg your pardon; I cannot finish what was in my mind to say. I forgot, Mr. Livingston, that we are comparative strangers."
"I am sorry, then, that you remember it," he replied. "It never seemed to me that we were strangers, Miss Hathaway. I do not think so now. There is something, I know not what, that draws people to each other in this country. It does not take weeks or months or years to form a friendship here. Two people meet, they speak, look into one another's eyes, then they are friends, comrades—or nothing, as it sometimes happens. They decide quickly here, not hampered by stiff conventionalities. It is instinct guides. Are you different from your countrymen?"
"No," she replied quickly. "Not in that one thing, at least. To be honest, I have never felt that you were a stranger to me; but a girl, even a rough Western girl, must sometimes remember and be restricted by conventionalities. I know what you are thinking, that conventionalities include politeness, and I have been rude to you. Perhaps that is the reason I wouldn't let you go back to Harris' with me the other night—I had not known you long enough."
He answered her simply: "I am not thinking of that night, but that you have just told me you are my friend—that you think kindly of me." She flashed him a look of surprise.
"But I never told you that!" she exclaimed.
"Not in just those words, true," he said. "But it is so. Didn't you say that you had never felt me to be a stranger to you? If you had not approved of me—thought kindly of me in the start, could you have felt so? No. When two people meet, they are friends, or they are still strangers—and you have never felt me to be a stranger. Is that not so?"