"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,—so vague and sweet."
"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?"
She halted and looked back.
"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now. And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be to carry in your head."
"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the night! I'm afraid!"
Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms.
As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe with him—"as with a brother"—she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks burn, she turned back and said:
"I must tell you he was my brother—that man—that night."
He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, which she interrupted.
"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do in this strange life?"