s to that, I can't say. Perhaps. I hope so. Life is full here."

"Full!" she interrupted him. "And life! You call this life?" She laughed
in harsh scorn.

"Don't you?" He looked at her with those blue, clear eyes that seemed to
see through her and around her and beyond her.

"I!" Her glance was full of resentful passion; tightly she closed her
lips; but there was something about him which seemed to force her to
reveal herself and, presently, she began again. "I am like a coyote with
a broken paw. It goes off by itself and hides until it can limp around.
But life, real life, is all out there." She threw out her hands as
indicating the world beyond the mountains. "If you call this life,
you've never lived."

He ignored this, smiling faintly.

"What is real life to you?" he asked.

So compelling was his manner, for no one could shock Seagreave and no
one could force him to condemn, that she almost said, "To love and be
loved." But she resisted her impulse to voice this. "Until a little
while before I came here, life meant to dance. I know, though, what it
is to get tired of the very things you think you love the most. After
I've stayed a while in the desert, I've just got to see the lights of
the city streets, to smell the stage, and to dance to the big audiences;
but after a bit, the buildings and the people begin to crowd on me and
push me and I feel as if I couldn't breathe, then I've just got to get
back to the desert again."

"Dancing is your expression," he said. "All of life is love and
expression." And now there was a falling note in his voice which her ear
was quick to catch. Almost she cried:

"Love! And yet you live here alone!"

"Yes," he went on, "we must have both. They are as necessary to us as
breath. Without them--" he stopped, evidently embarrassed, as if
suddenly aware that he had been talking more to himself than to her and
that in thus forgetting her, he had been more self-revealing than he
would have wished.

She shook her head, plainly puzzled. "But you are young," she said, and
stole another glance at him, adding a little shyly, "at least not very
old, and I feel, I am sure that you too have a broken paw, but when that
is well you will go back to your own country, to cities again. You
couldn't stand it here always."

He looked at her, an enigmatic smile on his lips. "Couldn't I?" he
said. Glancing again at her as he rose, he saw that she seemed weary,
her lashes lay long on her pale ch