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During those days in New York they walked miles together. Dart enjoyed walking, and so—after discarding her high heels for a pair of oxfords—did Amanda, happy to be with him, exploring Central Park and the East River, Chinatown or the Battery, eating at any time or place when they felt hungry and talking a lot. There was love between them, but little lovemaking. Only twice during those five days did Dart kiss her and she, though puzzled and finally a little frightened, had understood that in him reserve and a great strength of passion would permit of no casual intimacies. And she had been—almost—content to wait.
    She had suffered through a bitter week after he left for the West, with no word from him except a noncommittal post card received from Chicago.
    On the seventh evening after Dart’s leaving she had been in despair and Mrs. Lawrence, who had been watching and worrying all week, finally spoke. “Andy darling, please stop moping. Get dressed and go to the Merrill’s dance with Tim.... He wants you to so much.... Dart’s an interesting young man, but he isn’t worth all this...” There was much more delivered in Mrs. Lawrence’s sweet, incisive voice. The voice of common sense and convention. She ran down at last, sighed and glanced at her daughter. She patted her bobbed, still-broxwnish hair nervously and added, “Besides all that, too.... Well...”
    â€œAnd besides all that,” said Amanda, “he hasn’t actually asked me to marry him.”
    â€œYou’re so pretty, dear,” said Mrs. Lawrence quickly. “You ought to be having lots of gaiety and fun. If only that horrible crash ... and when I see those Merrills going on the same, not scratched—just because Roy Merrill developed some sort of a sixth sense or something in September of ’29 and got out of the market, while poor Daddy...” She shut her eyes, then shook her head. “There’s no use going back over things, but when I see the Merrills giving a dance like this at the Waldorf...” She broke off and listened to the buzzer in the hall outside. “I guess that’s Tim now, dear. Please be nice to him.”
    Amanda had always been nice to Tim and she was still very fond of him. He was a gay and personable young man in his evening clothes, a white carnation winking in his buttonhole, his blond hair gleaming like a helmet above his narrow, pinkish face. But he had gone out of focus for her and there was no gaiety in her to respond to his, nor any deeper chord of answer for the question in his eyes. She acceded at last to the combined urgings of her mother and Tim, and went off dispiritedly to dress. It was while she was pinning on the lavish orchid corsage Tim had brought her that the phone rang. Long distance from Globe, Arizona. And Dart’s voice amidst the crackles and fading of the connection said, “Andy—jobs are mighty scarce out here now but I think I’ve got one lined up as mine foreman. Shamrock Mine at Lodestone, fifty miles from here in the Dripping Spring Mountains. Will you marry me?”
    â€œYes,” said Amanda after a second of silence. Her hand shook on the receiver and her mother and Tim watched her with identical expressions of dismay as she added, on a breaking quaver, “Did you have any doubts that I would?”
    His deep voice answered slowly through the wire, “I wasn’t sure. I can’t offer you much, my dear. Lodestone’s nothing but a tough mining camp. I don’t know if you can be happy.”
    â€œI can,” she said. “If you really want me.”
    â€œI want you.” Then he added, with his usual bluntness, “I had to get back here to be certain. This is my country. I see clear here but I don’t know if you can.”
    â€œI’ll chance it,” she said.
    So she had not gone to the ball with Tim, after all. She had apologized abjectly and cried a little at