"You are like a father confessor," she said. "You hold in your hands the most intimate secrets of your people. I don't understand your patience with them. Do you feel that you have made your demonstration?"
"What I have done is written in lines of gold and green on the earth. The sky is too bright to remember my gray days," he replied, most exultantly.
She looked at him quizzically. "You are developing new and singular powers."
"I have a new and singular teacher."
"New?" she queried.
"New to me," he answered, and in such enigmatic way they expressed their emotion while Lawson and Jennie chatted gayly and in clear prose behind. Part of the time Elsie drove, and that gave Curtis an excuse to lay his hand on her wrist when he wished her to drive slow. At the half-way house she shuddered and made a mouth of disgust. "Let's hurry past here; I have a bad heart when I think of those horrible men."
"They are thinning out, and this ranch has 'changed hands' as they say on restaurant signs in Chicago. Here's our north line of fence," he said, as they came to a big, new gate. "I hastened to build this at once before anything happened to prevent. This keeps the stock of the white man out, and has stopped all friction."
As they came in sight of the flag-pole, Elsie cried out: "Just think! This is the third time I have driven up this road in this way. Twice with you."
"I know it is wonderful. I don't intend you to go away without me."
She was ignoring every one of his suggestions now, but the flush of her cheek and a certain softness in her eyes encouraged him to go on.