A few moments later she appeared--wholly unconscious of what had happened. A glance down the track and her face was the picture of despair.
Then she saw him coming toward her with long strides, flushed and excited. Regardless of appearances, conditions or consequences, she hurried to meet him.
"Where is the train?" she gasped, as the distance between them grew short, her blue eyes seeking his beseechingly, her hands clasped.
"It has gone."
"Gone? And we--we are left?"
He nodded, delighted by the word "we."
"The conductor said thirty minutes; it has been but twenty," she cried, half tearfully, half angrily, looking at her watch. "Oh, what shall I do?" she went on, distractedly. He had enjoyed the sweet, despairing tones, but this last wail called for manly and instant action.
"Can we catch the train? We must! I will give one thousand dollars. I must catch it." She had placed her gloved hand against a telegraph pole to steady her trembling, but her face was resolute, imperious, commanding.
She was ordering him to obey as she would have commanded a slave. In her voice there was authority, in her eye there was fear. She could control the one but not the other.
"We cannot catch the flyer. I want to catch it as much as you and"--here he straightened himself--"I would add a thousand to yours." He hesitated a moment-thinking. "There is but one way, and no time to lose."
With this he turned and ran rapidly toward the little depot and telegraph office.