He breathed a sigh which she flattered herself was relief. Two weeks later the theatre closed. The days were hot and dry. Bob was tired, and determined not to be worried about Trent, who was working to the limit of his endurance. When he came into her room the Sunday morning after her closing, she was shocked by him.
"Well, Saint Francis, you look as if you had fasted forty days and forty nights."
"I hate to think of you dying alone--better come along."
"I don't know. I'd like to go to some perfectly new place."
"I'd like to rough it. Camp, skies for roof, all that kind of differentness."
"I knew some people who went to Estes Park and loved it. How about that?"
"Actual tents? You don't seem to suggest that sort of thing."
"Log cabin, cook in the open, all day in the saddle. Come on, let's go!"
"I'm nearly through with all I can do now. How long will it take you to get ready?"
"You'll go off gypsying with me alone, Barbara?"
"Give me directions. I'll get tickets to-morrow."
So it was decided. Barbara plunged into dismantling her rooms and packing her things. She dispatched the maid and many trunks to the country. The next night, when Paul came in, she stood in the midst of the denuded rooms.
"You actually did it. You Irish do put things through!" he exclaimed.
"I did, and wired the ranchman. We go on the Century to Chicago."
"You're not afraid of this new experiment?"
"Going off alone into the wilderness with me. We will be dependent on each other. No little 'convenances' in the woods, you know."
"I'm not afraid. I'd go alone with my maid, and you would be some protection."
They set out next day, both too tired for any sense of adventure. Bob had the drawing-room, and Paul wandered in and out, interrupting her reading. The trip west, beyond Chicago, was uneventful and hot. It was only when they arrived at Loveland, where they took the motor into the Park, that their interest began to awaken.
The ride into Estes along the narrow roads, winding between high cliffs on one side, the roaring, foaming, booming Big Thompson River on the other--higher and higher and wilder as it winds--whipped Bob's spirits into a froth of talk and laughter. Paul was conscious of a sense of peril in her nearness, in her charm. He warned himself of the great disadvantage of being the one of them who cared. "We start even," he had said on that eventful day. "I wonder how we'll end?" he mused, looking into her vivid face.