She was sketching so industriously that she never heard me coming until I stood right at her elbow.
It might have been the first time over again, except that my mental attitude toward her had changed a lot.
"That's better; I can see now what you're trying to draw," I said, looking down over her shoulder--not at the sketch; it might have been a sea view, for all I knew--but at the pink curve of her cheek, which was growing pinker while I looked.
She did not glance up, or even start; so she must have known, all along, that I was headed her way.

She went on making a lot of marks that didn't seem to fit anywhere, and that seemed to me a bit wobbly and uncertain.
I caught just the least hint of a smile twitching the corner of her mouth--I wanted awfully to kiss it! "Yes?
I believe I have at last got everything--King's Highway--in the proper perspective and the proper proportion," she said, stumbling a bit over the alliteration--and no wonder.

It was a sentence to stampede cattle; but I didn't stampede.

I wanted, more than ever, to kiss--but I won't be like Barney, if I can help it.
"It's too far off--too unattainable," I criticized--meaning something more than her sketch of the pass.

"And it's too narrow.