The glow was still in his eyes, but in all other respects he was his usual self, calm, collected.

Together they went down the cool, dim canon, with its honey scent of flowers drifting with them; and though they talked lightly of things of no importance, there was a little smile on the lips of each and sometimes their eyes met, as if sharing a new, sweet intimacy.
Thereafter, frequent as were Lee's calls at Sarita Creek of evenings, he seldom had Ruth to himself and on more than one occasion had to share her company with Charlie Menocal, much to his impatience.

When Imogene sometimes succeeded in detaining the fellow at her side, Bryant silently gave her unutterable thanks.

And Ruth seemed day by day more receptive to his passion.
"I think of only two things, my canal and you," he declared to her one night.
"When you put me first and the canal second, why, who knows what I may think then ?" she said, tantalizingly.

"But to esteem an irrigation ditch before me, the idea! What if you had to choose between us ?" And she continued thus to tease him, fanning the fires hotter in his breast.
By the end of August Bryant had completed the survey of the canal line down to a point where it touched the northern boundary of the ranch, tapping the latter's system of distributing ditches.