I was apparently a prey to all disordered fancies that night, for it seemed a desecration that the little white hand should even bear the touch of another man's jacket, and I lifted it gently into my own hard palm. Also, I think I came desperately near stooping and touching it with my lips. Be that as it may, in another second the opportunity was lacking, for Lucille grasped the rails with it some distance away from me, and leaned out over them to watch the sliding prairie, her light dress streaming about her in the whistling draught.
"The cars were very stuffy, and I am glad I came out. It is a perfectly glorious night," she said.
The remark seemed very disconnected, but she was right. The prairie there was dead-level, a vast, rippling silver sea overhung by a spangled vault of softest indigo. In spite of the rattling ballast and puffs of whirled-up dust the lash of cool wind was grateful, and the rush of the clanking cars stirred one's blood. Still, in contrast to their bulk and speed, the slight figure in the fluttering white dress seemed very frail and insecure as it leaned forth from the rails, and I set my teeth when, with a sudden swing and a giddy slanting, we roared across a curving bridge. Before the dark creek whirled behind us I had flung my arm partly around the girl's waist and clenched the rails in front of her.
"I am quite safe," she said calmly, after a curious glance at me. "You look positively startled."
"I was so," I answered, speaking no more than the truth, for the fright had turned me cold; and she once more looked down at the whirling prairie.
"That was very unreasonable. You are not responsible for me."
Perhaps the fright had rendered me temporarily light-headed, for I answered, on impulse: "No; on the other hand, you are responsible for me."
"I?" the girl said quietly, with a demureness which was not all mockery. "How could that be? Such a responsibility would be too onerous for me."
"Why it should be I cannot tell you; but it is the truth," I said. "Twice, when a crisis had to be faced, it was your opinions that turned the scale for me; and I think that, growing hopeless, I should have allowed Lane to rob me and gone elsewhere in search of better fortune had it not been for the courage you infused into me. Once or twice also you pointed the way out of a difficulty, and the clearness of your views was almost startling. The most curious thing is that you are so much younger than I."