Diana nodded. "I'm using another person's money and I must get on, to-morrow, with the work I agreed to do. Promise me, Enoch."
"But, Diana—O Diana! Diana! Let me go with you!"
Diana turned to face the dwelling. "The Canyon can do more for you than I can, Enoch. But we'll meet, say at El Tovar before you go back to Washington. Promise me, Enoch."
"Of course, I promise. But, Diana, how can I let you go!"
Enoch put his arm across Diana's shoulders and stood beside her, staring at the silent, deserted dwelling. It seemed to Enoch, standing so, that this was the sweetest and saddest moment of his life; saddest because he felt that in nothing more than friendship must he ever touch her hand with his: sweetest because for the first time in his history he was beginning to understand the depth and beauty that can exist in a friendship between a man and a woman.
"Diana," he said at last, "you may take yourself away from me, but nevertheless, I shall carry with me the thought of your loveliness, like a rod and a staff to sustain me."
When Diana turned to look at him there were tears in her eyes.
"I've always been glad that I was not ugly," she said, "but now,"—smiling through wet lashes—"you make me proud of it, though I can't see how the thought of it can—"
She paused and Enoch went on eagerly: "It's a seamy, rough world, Diana, all higgledy-piggledy. The beautiful souls are misplaced in ugly carcasses and the ugly souls in beautiful. Those who might be friends and lovers too often meet only to grieve that it is too late for their joy. In such a world, when one beholds a body that nature has chiseled and molded and polished to loveliness like yours and discovers that that loveliness is a true index of the intelligence and fineness of the character dwelling in the body—well, Diana, it gives one a new thought about God. It does, indeed!"
"Enoch, I don't deserve it! I truly don't!" looking at him with that curious mingling of tenderness and courtesy and understanding in her wide eyes that made Diana unique.