what she had seen of his rural
preferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted any
direct questioning that would have revealed his name and identity would
have obliged her to speak of herself as his father's guest. She began
indirectly; he had said he had been a reporter, and he was still a
chronicler of this strange life. He had of course heard of many cases
of family feuds and estrangements? Her brother had told her of some
dreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest, and how whole families
had been divided. Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases of
brothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations;
of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted; of fathers
encountering discarded sons!

John Milton's face betrayed no uneasy consciousness. If anything it was
beginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligence
of the fair speaker, that was perhaps heightened by an assumption of
half coquettish discomfiture.

"You are laughing at me!" she said finally. "But inhuman and selfish as
these stories may seem, and sometimes are, I believe that these curious
estrangements and separations often come from some fatal weakness of
temperament that might be strengthened, or some trivial misunderstanding
that could be explained. It is separation that makes them seem
irrevocable only because they are inexplicable, and a vague memory
always seems more terrible than a definite one. Facts may be forgiven
and forgotten, but mysteries haunt one always. I believe there are weak,
sensitive people who dread to put their wrongs into shape; those are the
kind who sulk, and when you add separation to sulking, reconciliation
becomes impossible. I knew a very singular case of that kind once. If
you like, I'll tell it to you. May be you will be able, some day, to
weave it into one of your writings. And it's quite true."

It is hardly necessary to say that John Milton had not been touched by
any personal significance in his companion's speech, whatever she may
have intended; and it is equally true that whether she had presently
forgotten her purpose, or had become suddenly interested in her own
conversation, her face grew more animated, her manner more confidential,
and something of the youthful enthusiasm she had shown in the mountain
seemed to come back to her.

"I might say it happened anywhere and call the people M. or N., but it
really did occur in my o