That Sunday afternoon at Sarita Creek! The dinner, so savoury, so delectable; the two girls, arrayed in cool white lawn, rosy-cheeked, beaming; the gay talk and banter and laughter; the blissful hours together on the grass beneath the trees, with the wide mesa diffusing an immense languor, with the mountains bestowing a vast peace, with the brook at their feet murmuring an accompaniment to their words—hours to treasure, hours of pure gold: Little wonder that Dave, lying full length and gazing upward through the boughs at the blue vault, allowed his eyelids to sink and at last to close. Little wonder the girls' faces grew dreamy and their voices gentle. And none, none at all, that Lee succumbed to the spell.
He was still under the enchantment when toward sunset Ruth suggested they go up the cañon. But Imogene, arousing herself, declared that she had letters to write; and Dave, still fast asleep, was already on roamings of his own. Ruth and Lee therefore went alone up the path through the trees and underbrush, until they emerged in the cool, dusky gorge formed by the contracting of the rocky walls. The brook rippled by over stones and moss. A few insects hovered over the stream with their tiny bodies shining like bronze. From somewhere came a sweet, honeyed smell of flowers.
"Imo writes letters regularly," Ruth explained concerning her friend, "to an instructor in a university in the East. I don't think they're exactly affianced, but expect to be. Waiting, apparently. Waiting until he's a professor—and until her health is better, too, I imagine. An agreement to let things rest as they are for the present, one might say. Imogene talks very little about it, and of course I ask no questions."
She sat down on a fallen tree, patting its trunk to signify a place for him at her side. Pointing at crevises in the cañon wall, she began to tell him the names she and Imogene had given them—Bandit's Stair, Devil's Crack, Bear's Hole, and to enumerate those assigned the jutting points and knobs along the rim that by a stretch of the imagination bore a resemblance to animals or human heads.
As she talked, with her gray eyes at times turning to his to learn if he was interested, he felt anew the charm of her youthfulness, of her vivid personality. It dwelt in her small, firm hands pointing now here, now there, in her slender, rounded form faced toward him, in her red lips, her soft smooth cheek, her brow, in her glances and her animated words. He noted again, as a quality altogether delicious, the air of unconscious friendliness that he had perceived at their very first encounter. It quite offset the slight touch of obstinacy in her chin—but, in truth, did the latter require an offset? He had earlier thought that with such a trait one could not foretell where its possessor might go, or what do, or what exact, under stress of feeling. He smiled at that now. How ridiculous the notion! Why shouldn't a girl have a bit of determination in her make-up? Well, she should. It gave force to her character. It made her more individual, more attractive. It coloured a nature so essentially feminine as Ruth Gardner's with elusive and delightful possibilities.
"See, up yonder at the top!" she exclaimed. "That piece of rock like a man's head and shoulders I named Lee Bryant, after you."
"Do I look as block-headed as that?"
"No. It was not because of any resemblance, but because you kept your back so long toward us. Now, however, since you've repented and ceased to neglect us, I shall call it after someone else. Perhaps after the stage-driver who takes our letters down to Kennard; he sits hunched up like that. I'll seek a much nicer rock to represent you."
"That's wholly unnecessary, for I intend to keep before your eyes in person."
"Which will be the nicest of all," said she, smiling.