"Yes, it's Forks Creek, famous for its pies. Everybody eats pie at the Forks. Will you climb down from the heights of the sublime and go and eat pie with me?"
"Anything you say," she rejoined, laughing; and a few minutes later, John Burton the canny was scandalized to see the President's daughter walking up and down the narrow platform with the passenger agent, eating her half of an apple turnover which Brockway had bought and shared with her.
John Burton was scandalized, and he said as much to his wife when the train was once more on its way up the canyon.
"Emily, there's going to be a fracas when we get back to-night. It's my opinion that the President sent his daughter with us to get her out of Fred's reach."
"Then it serves him right," said Mrs. Burton, complacently. "She is not a child; she's old enough to know her own mind."
"That may be, but it doesn't let us out. I wish you'd go back and sit with them awhile."
"And get myself disliked? No, thank you. I may not shine as a star in the chaperonic firmament, but I'm a human being. Think of it; put yourself in Fred's place, if you haven't hopelessly outlived the possibility, and see how you'd like to be duennaed at such a time."
"It isn't a question of likes and--" but at that moment the truants appeared to speak for themselves.
"It's chilly out there in the open car, and we came in to talk and get warm," said Gertrude. "Did you get any pie, Mrs. Burton?"
"No; Mr. Burton wasn't as thoughtful as Fr--as Mr. Brockway."
"Mr. Brockway was twice thoughtful," laughed Gertrude, as the passenger agent drew a pie from under his coat and proceeded to cut it into quarters with his pocket-knife.
Burton said, "Oh, pshaw!" with deprecatory emphasis, but he accepted his allotment and ate it with the others. Afterward, when the talk took flight into the region of badinage, he went away and devoted himself dutifully to the Tadmorians.
When he was gone, the trio made merry with true holiday zest. For Gertrude, the little plunge into the stream of unconventionality was refreshing and keenly exhilarating, and she bore her part joyously, forgetting the day of reckoning, and seeking only to make the most of the few hours of outlawry.
Brockway, too, drank of the cup of levity, but in his inmost parts he stood amazed with sheer joy in the presence of the real Gertrude--of the woman he loved divested of the mask of conventionality. He had loved her well for what he thought she was, and had been content to set her upon a pedestal to be worshipped from afar as the apotheosis of adorable womanhood. But the light of this later revelation individualized her; ideals and abstractions vanished before her living, breathing personality, and Brockway was made to know that she could never again be to him the mere archetype of lovable woman-kind. She was infinitely more. She was the one woman in all the world whose life might be the complement of his; the other half of the broken talisman; the major and truer portion of a mystic circle of which his being was the other segment.