across the
cold, white, monotonous, snow-smothered landscape the pale afternoon
light was beginning to wane, and against the lowering red and purple
streaks of the wintry sunset the Young Electrician's figure, with the
little huddling pack on its shoulder, was silhouetted vaguely, with an
almost startling mysticism, like the figure of an unearthly Traveler
starting forth upon an unearthly journey into an unearthly West.

"Ain't he the nice boy!" exclaimed the Traveling Salesman with almost
passionate vehemence.

"Why, I'm sure I don't know!" said the Youngish Girl a trifle coldly.
"Why--it would take me quite a long time--to decide just how--nice he
was. But--" with a quick softening of her voice--"but he certainly
makes one think of--nice things--Blue Mountains, and Green Forests,
and Brown Pine Needles, and a Long, Hard Trail, shoulder to
shoulder--with a chance to warm one's heart at last at a
hearth-fire--bigger than a sunset!"

Altogether unconsciously her small hands went gripping out to the edge
of her seat, as though just a grip on plush could hold her
imagination back from soaring into a miraculous, unfamiliar world
where women did not idle all day long on carpets waiting for men who
came on--pavements.

"Oh, my God!" she cried out with sudden passion. "I wish I could have
lived just one day when the world was new. I wish--I wish I could have
reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had
caught it and--appraised it--and taxed it--and licensed it--and
_staled_ it!"

"Oh-ho!" said the Traveling Salesman with a little sharp indrawing of
his breath. "Oh-ho!--So that's what the--Young Electrician makes you
think of, is it?"

For just an instant the Traveling Salesman thought that the Youngish
Girl was going to strike him.

"I wasn't thinking of the Young Electrician at all!" she asserted
angrily. "I was thinking of something altogether--different."

"Yes. That's just it," murmured the Traveling Salesman placidly.
"Something--altogether--different. Every time I look at him it's the
darnedest thing! Every time I look at him I--forget all about him. My
head begins to wag and my foot begins to tap--and I find myself trying
to--_hum_ him--as though he was the words of a tune I used to know."

When the Traveling Salesman looked round again, there were tears in
the Youngish Girl's eyes, and an instant after that her shoulders went
plunging forward till her forehead rested on the back of the