"I'm selfish enough to wish that it wasn't at an end to-night," Ingram said, as he took his piece of blackberry pie from Mary Cody; "you're a godsend in this place, Alva."
"But you'll like Lassie," his companion replied; "she's a charming little girl,--and I love her so. I always have loved the child, and just now it seemed to me as if it would do both her and me good to be together. Life for me is so wonderful--I don't like to be selfish with these days. My thoughts are too happy to keep to myself. I want some one to share my joy."
Ingram looked at her quizzically. "And I won't do at all?" he asked.
"You,--oh, you're away all day. And then, besides, you're still so material, so awfully material. You can't deny it, Ronald, you're frightfully material--practical--commonplace. Of the world so very worldly."
He laughed lightly. "Just because I don't agree with you about the dam," he said; "there, that's it, you know. Why, my dear girl, suppose all America had been reserved for its beauty, set aside for the perpetual preservation of the buffaloes and the scenery,--where would you and I be now?"
She looked away from him in her curious, contemplative way. "If you knew," she said, after a minute, "how silly and petty and trivial such arguments sound to thinking people, you'd positively blush with shame to use them. It's like arguing with a baby to try to talk Heaven's reason with the ordinary man; he just sees his own little, narrow, earthly standpoint. I wonder whether it's worth while to ever try to be serious with you. You know very well that the most of your brethren would be willing to wreck the Yellowstone from end to end, if they could make their own private and personal fortunes building railways through it."
Ingram laughed again. "Where would the country be without railroads?" he asked.
She withdrew the meaning in her gaze out of the infinite beyond, where it seemed to float easily, and centred it on him.
"Just to think," she said, with deep meaning, "that ten years ago I might have married you, and had to face your system of logic for life!"
"It might have been. We might have made it so before we knew better. That's the rub in marriage. Every one does it before he or she has settled his or her own views. I wasn't much of an idealist ten years ago, and you were not much of anything. But if I could have married any one then, I should have married you."