"Yes," replied Enoch. Then with a quick, direct look, he asked, "Did your father, ever give you the details of his experience with me in the Canyon?"
Diana's voice was low but very steady as she replied, "Yes, Mr. Secretary. He told me long ago, when you made your famous Boyhood on the Rack speech in Congress. It was the first word he had heard of you in all the years and he was deeply moved."
"I'm glad he told you," said Enoch. "I'm glad, because I'd like to ask you to be my friend, and I would want the sort of friend you would make to know the worst as well as the best about me."
"If that is the worst of you--" Diana began quickly, then paused. "As father told me, it was a story of a boy's suffering and the final triumph of his mind and his body."
Enoch stared at Diana with astonishment in every line of his face. Then he sighed. "He couldn't have told you all," he muttered.
"Yes, he did, all! And nothing, not even what the President said to-day, can mean as much to me as your asking me to be your friend."
Enoch continued to stare at the lovely, tender face opposite him.
Diana smiled. "Don't look so incredulous, Mr. Secretary! It's not polite. You are a very famous person. I am nobody. We are lunching together in a wonderful hotel. I don't even vaguely surmise the names of the things we are eating. Don't look at me doubtingly. Look complacent because you can give a lady so much joy."
Enoch laughed with a quick relief that made his cheeks burn. "And so you are nobody! Curious, then, that you should have impressed yourself on me so deeply even when you were a child!"
It was Diana's turn to laugh. "Oh, come, Mr. Secretary! Of course I don't recall it myself, but Dad has always said that you were bored to death at having a small girl taking the trail with you."
"Do you remember that your mule slipped on the home trail and that I saved your life?" demanded Enoch.
Diana shook her head. "I was too small and there were too many canyon trips and too many tourists. I wish--"
She did not finish her sentence, but Enoch said, with a thread of earnestness in his deep voice that made Diana look at him keenly, "I wish you did remember!"
There was a moment's silence, then Enoch went on, "Shall you carry on your work with the Indians alone as you always have done? I believe I can quite understand your father's uneasiness."