ine-looking woman of thirty-eight. She does not appear
this age for her strenuous life in the open has kept her young and
fresh. She possesses the frank, clear, direct quality of outdoors,
outspoken and generous. Her wavy hair is a dark brown, her eyes
blue-gray. CURTIS JAYSON is a tall, rangy, broad-shouldered man of
thirty-seven. While spare, his figure has an appearance of rugged
health, of great nervous strength held in reserve. His square-jawed,
large-featured face retains an eager boyish enthusiasm in spite of its
prevailing expression of thoughtful, preoccupied aloofness. His crisp
dark hair is graying at the temples. EDWARD BIGELOW is a large,
handsome man of thirty-nine. His face shows culture and tolerance, a
sense of humor, a lazy unambitious contentment. CURTIS is reading an
article in some scientific periodical, seated by the table. MARTHA and
BIGELOW are sitting nearby, laughing and chatting.

BIGELOW--[Is talking with a comically worried but earnest air.] Do you
know, I'm getting so I'm actually afraid to leave them alone with that
governess. She's too romantic. I'll wager she's got a whole book full
of ghost stories, superstitions, and yellow-journal horrors up her
sleeve.

MARTHA--Oh, pooh! Don't go milling around for trouble. When I was a kid
I used to get fun out of my horrors.

BIGELOW--But I imagine you were more courageous than most of us.

MARTHA--Why?

BIGELOW--Well, Nevada--the Far West at that time--I should think a
child would have grown so accustomed to violent scenes--

MARTHA--[Smiling.] Oh, in the mining camps; but you don't suppose my
father lugged me along on his prospecting trips, do you? Why, I never
saw any rough scenes until I'd finished with school and went to live
with father in Goldfield.

BIGELOW--[Smiling.] And then you met Curt.

MARTHA--Yes--but I didn't mean he was a rough scene. He was very mild
even in those days. Do tell me what he was like at Cornell.

BIGELOW--A romanticist--and he still is!

MARTHA--[Pointing at CURTIS with gay mischief.] What! That sedate man!
Never!

CURTIS--[Looking up and smiling at them both affectionately--lazily.]
Don't mind him, Martha. He always was crazy.

BIGELOW--[To CURT--accusingly.] Why did you elect to take up mining
engineering at Cornell instead of a classical degree at the Yale of
your fathers and brothers? Because you had been reading Bret Harte in
prep. school and mistaken him for a modern realist. You devoted four
y