After a little, when she had seated herself in the governor's chair, from where she looked gayly at the big, smiling man who watched her, she got up and Lawler led her to one of the great windows.

"Father is much better, Kane," she said. "In another week he will be able to ride. Your mother sent you her love, and Shorty told me to tell you to take care of yourself. Kane, Shorty actually loves you!"

"Shorty is a man, Ruth."

"Oh, he is wonderful!" And then, with a direct look at him, she added:

"Della Wharton has gone East, Kane."

Lawler's eyes narrowed; he was silent.

Ruth's voice was tremulous with happiness as she stood close to the man she had come to marry on the morrow, in the big house which was awaiting both of them--the governor's mansion. "Kane," she said; "I used to dream of this day--tomorrow, I mean; but I never thought it would be like this--so terribly, solemnly happy."

Lawler drew her closer to him--and nearer the window. "I wonder if you know how lonesome I used to feel as I sat at my desk, there, trying to look out over that great waste of world, stretching between us?"

"I know," she said, lowly; "I used to feel the same way. There was a time--right after you went away to begin your campaign, when it seemed to me that: you had gone to the farthest limits of the earth."

"And now?" he asked, smiling. And when she did not answer, he added; "the world seems to have become very small."

"It is a wonderful world, Kane," she said solemnly.

For a time both were silent, gazing out of the window. In the foreground were the bare trees of the capitol grounds; the white, curving walks, the low stone fence with its ma.s.sive posts; the broad streets of the city animated by traffic; the roofs of buildings. But straight down a street that intersected the broad thoroughfare skirting the capitol grounds on the east, they could look beyond the limits of the city at the mighty level country that stretched into the yawning gulf of distance--toward Willets; straight to the section of world which had been the scene of the conflict that had tried them sorely.

It was a bleak picture; the plains dead and drear, barren of verdure--a dull, drab expanse of waste world with no life or movement in it, stretching below gray, cold clouds.

But while they watched, a rift appeared in the clouds. It grew, expanded, and a shaft of sunlight pierced it, s.h.i.+mmering, glowing--touching the waste of world with a brilliance that thrilled them.

It was evident that Ruth seemed to feel that the glimmering shaft was a promise of happiness to come, for when Lawler turned, her eyes were s.h.i.+ning with a light that caused his own to deepen with sympathy and understanding.