Barbara watched him covertly, and once more noticed the slight hardening of his lips, and the very faint deepening of the bronze in his cheeks. It was only just perceptible, but though the sun and wind had darkened its tinting, Brooke had a clear English complexion, and the blood showed through his skin. His companion remembered the old house in the English valley, with its trim gardens and great sweep of velvet lawn, where he had admitted that he had once been long ago. The statement she had fancied at the time was purposely vague, and she wondered now if he had meant that he had lived there, for Barbara possessed the not unusual feminine capacity for putting two and two together. She, however, naturally showed nothing of this.
"I suppose it does," she said. "I wonder if you ever feel any faint longing for what you must have left behind you there. One learns to do without a good deal in Canada."
Brooke smiled curiously. "Of course! That is one reason why I am pleased you sent for me. This, you see, brings it back to me."
He glanced suggestively round the big, brilliantly-lighted building, across the rows of citizens in broadcloth, and daintily-dressed women, and then turned and fixed his eyes upon his companion's face almost too steadily. The girl understood him, but she would not admit it.
"You mean the music?" she said.
"No. The music, to tell the truth, is by no means very good. It is you who have taken me back to the Old Country. Imagination will do a great deal, but it needs a fillip, and something tangible to build upon."
Barbara laughed softly.
"I fancy the C. P. R. and an Allan liner would be a much more reliable means of transportation. You will presumably take that route some day?"
"I scarcely think it likely. They have, in the Western idiom, no use for poor men yonder."
"Still, men get rich now and then in this country."