ned, and slowly opening her eyes saw to her
surprise that Seagreave was sitting a few feet away from her. He held a
book in his hand, but he was not reading, neither was he looking at her,
but out through a break in the trees at innumerable blue ranges,
floating, unsubstantial as mist in a flood of sunshine.

She sat up, and he, hearing her move, turned quickly and met her eyes.

"I came here to read," he said, in smiling explanation. "I often come,
and, seeing you here and asleep, I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind if
I stayed and kept away the bears and mountain lions."

She was still a little dazed. "Why, why," rubbing her eyes, "I must
have been asleep. It is so pleasant here."

He turned quickly. "You find it pleasant?" he said, "then the mountains
must be beginning to exert their spell upon you."

"I don't know," she answered slowly; "I don't hate them like I used to;
but I'll never really care for them. I love the desert."

"You must tell me what you find in the desert," he said. She looked out
broodingly at the ranges, the strange sphynx look in her eyes, but she
did not answer him. At last she withdrew her gaze from the hills and
glanced rather contemptuously at the book in his hands. "Don't you ever
work?" she asked abruptly. "You're a man."

"Sometimes I work down in the mines, if I want to," he replied
carelessly; "but I rarely want to. Sometimes, too, I write a little."

"But don't you want to work all the time with your hands or your head,
like other men do?" she persisted.

"No," he returned. "To what profit would it be?" There was just a trace
of bitterness in his voice.

"But you are strong and a man," she spoke now with unveiled scorn. "You
wouldn't be content always to sit up in a mountain cabin by the fire
like an old woman."

"Wouldn't I?" he asked. "Why not?" The bitterness was more apparent now,
and a shadow had fallen over his face. Pearl realized that, for the
moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind
had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the
experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a
recluse in the lonely and isolated mountains.

It was a more or less conventional story. All events which penetrate
deeply into human experience are. They are vital and living, because
universal; therefore we call them conventional. Seagreave had been left
an orphan at an early age, and as he inherited wealth and was born o