erent. It--" she struggled for expression, "it is always you."

Something in this seemed to strike him. "Perhaps I have that to learn."
Again he meditated a few moments, then looked up with a smile. "You must
tell me all that you find in the desert and I will tell you all that I
find in the mountains. It will be jolly to talk to a woman again." He
spoke with a satisfaction thoroughly genuine.

She glanced at him suspiciously. She was uncertain how to meet this
frank acceptance of comradeship, free yet from the intrusion of sex.
"Maybe," she acquiesced a little doubtfully. Then she drew her brows
together. "I don't want to learn anything about the mountains," she
cried, all the heaviness and the dumb revolt of her spirit finding a
voice. "And I don't want ever to go back to the desert again; and I
don't even want to dance," looking at him in a sort of wild wonder as if
this were unbelievable, "not even to dance."

He realized that she was suffering from some grief against which she
struggled, and which she refused to accept. "You will not feel so
always," he said. "It is because you are unhappy now."

There was consolation in his sincerity, in his sympathy, in his entire
belief in what he was saying, and it was with difficulty that she
repressed an outburst of her sullen sorrow. "Yes," her mouth worked, "I
am unhappy, and I won't be, I won't be. I never was before. It is all in
here, like a dead weight, a drag, a cold hand clutching me." She pressed
both hands to her heart. Then she drew back as if furious at having so
far revealed herself.

"That heals." He leaned forward to speak. "I am telling you the truth!
That heals and is forgotten. I know that that is so."

"I know who you are," she said suddenly. "I have been trying to think
ever since I heard him," she nodded toward Jose, bent over his cards,
"say 'Saint Harry.' I remember now. I have heard Hughie often speak of
you. They say that you are good, that if any one is sick you nurse him,
and that if any one is broke you help him. They all come to you."

"Yes, 'Saint Harry'!" he laughed. "Oh, it's funny, but let them call me
any name they please as long as it amuses them. What difference does it
make? I am glad Hughie is coming up, I want some music. He puts the
mountains into music for me."

"And for me." She smiled and then sighed bitterly, gazing drearily into
the fire, now a bed of glowing embers. Then latent and feminine
curiosity stirred in her thoughts