I know, but which isn't! Do you know the feeling you get when
you steal all alone into one of those great, empty, silent churches,
where it is always a dim twilight? Not that Tommy is as somber and
stately as a great cathedral," she smiled. "Just the opposite, I know.
But his sunny nature, his unruffled cheerfulness affect me like a
sermon. When I allow myself to descend into the depths and see how
Tommy manages it, I feel as if I ought to be spanked. I think," she
ended, "that I have pretty well mixed things up, haven't I? But you
understand what I mean?"

"I understand. And since we have drunk to the Great Work, shall we
drink to a Great Soul who is a vital part of it? I don't know how we'd
manage without Tommy Garton."

They touched glasses gravely and drank to a man who, as they sat
looking out upon life through long, glorious vistas, dawn-flushed, lay
alone upon his cot, his face buried in his arms.

They finished their meal, cleared away the dishes together, and still
Mr. Crawford had not come. Then Conniston dragged two of the chairs
out to the front porch, took a cigar from the jar where it had been
kept moist with half an apple, and they went out to enjoy the cool
freshness of the evening. The sun had sunk out of sight, the mood of
the desert had changed. All of the dull gray monotone was gone. All
the length of the long, low western horizon the dross of the garish
day was being transmuted by the alchemy of the sunset into red and
yellow gold, molten and ever flowing, as though spilled from some
great retort to run sluggishly in a gleaming band about the earth.

A little wandering breeze had sprung up, and went whispering out
across the dim plains. It swirled away the smoke from Conniston's
cigar; he saw it stir a strand of hair across Argyl's cheek. The glory
of the desert was still the wonderful thing it had been, but it was
less than the essential, vital glory of a girl. Suddenly a great
desire was upon him to call out to her, to tell her that he loved her
more than all of the rest of life, to make her listen to him, to make
her love him. And with the rush of the desire came the thought, as
though it were a whispered voice from the heart of the desert: "What
are you that you should speak so to her. _What have you done to make
you worthy of this woman?_ You, a laggard, as frivolous a thing until
now as a weathercock, and by no means so useful a factor in the world,
your regeneration merely begun; she the