Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?"
"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted smilingly.
"Will you be my wife?"
"Yes, sir: I meant to be all the time."
The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the rejected lover."
"Poor fellow! so he shouldn't be left behind. He shall be conductor of the train," she said with a bewitching laugh. His response was not verbal.
"How cold the wind is!" she said.
"Shall I build you another wigwam?"
"No: let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,' and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we get home. Come, let's dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore."
They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a patch of hard bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard puckered his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round, to and fro, they swept until, laughing, flushed and panting, they came to a stop.