"I beg your pardon. It was very stupid of me."

As he spoke, a mask of cold indifference slipped over her face. Without
deigning to notice his courteous apology, she looked away, and, moving to
the railing of the platform, became ostensibly interested in the busy
activity of the railroad yards.

Had the woman--in that instant when his arm was over her shoulder and his
eyes were looking into hers--smiled, the incident would have slipped
quickly from his mind. As it was, the flash-like impression of the moment
remained, and--

Down the steep grade of the narrow San Timateo Canyon, on the coast side
of the mountain pass, the Overland thundered on the last stretch of its
long race to the western edge of the continent. And now, from the car
windows, the passengers caught tantalizing glimpses of bright pastures
with their herds of contented dairy cows, and with their white ranch
buildings set in the shade of giant pepper and eucalyptus trees. On the
rounded shoulders and steep flanks of the foothills that form the sides of
the canyon, the barley fields looked down upon the meadows; and, now and
then, in the whirling landscape winding side canyons--beautiful with
live-oak and laurel, with greasewood and sage--led the eye away toward the
pine-fringed ridges of the Galenas while above, the higher snow-clad peaks
and domes of the San Bernardinos still shone coldly against the blue.

In the Pullman, there was a stir of awakening interest The travel-wearied
passengers, laying aside books and magazines and cards, renewed
conversations that, in the last monotonous hours of the desert part of
the journey, had lagged painfully. Throughout the train, there was an air
of eager expectancy; a bustling movement of preparation. The woman of the