own world, and she can't fall back into ours.
We've grown apart, some way--miles and miles apart--and I'm afraid she's
fearfully unhappy."

"It's a very tragic story that you are telling me, Gaylord," said
Everett. They were well out into the country now, spinning along over
the dusty plains of red grass, with the ragged-blue outline of the
mountains before them.

"Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, man, nobody
will ever know how tragic. It's a tragedy I live with and eat with and
sleep with, until I've lost my grip on everything. You see she had made
a good bit of money, but she spent it all going to health resorts. It's
her lungs, you know. I've got money enough to send her anywhere, but the
doctors all say it's no use. She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just
getting through the days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before
she came to me. She just wrote that she was all run down. Now that she's
here, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won't
leave. She says it's easier to let go of life here, and that to go East
would be dying twice. There was a time when I was a brakeman with a run
out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little thing I could carry on my
shoulder, when I could get her everything on earth she wanted, and she
hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't cover; and now, when I've got a
little property together, I can't buy her a night's sleep!"

Everett saw that, whatever Charley Gaylord's present status in the world
might be, he had brought the brakeman's heart up the ladder with him,
and the brakeman's frank avowal of sentiment. Presently Gaylord went on:

"You can understand how she has outgrown her family. We're all a pretty
common sort, railroaders from away back. My father was a conductor. He
died when we were kids. Maggie, my other sister, who lives with me, was
a telegraph operator here while I was getting my grip on things. We had
no education to speak of. I have to hire a stenographer because I can't
spell straight--the Almighty couldn't teach me to spell. The things that
make up life to Kate are all Greek to me, and there's scarcely a point
where we touch any more, except in our recollections of the old times
when we were all young and happy together, and Kate sang in a church
choir in Bird City. But I believe, Mr. Hilgarde, that if she can see
just one person like you, who knows about the things and people she's
interested in, it will give her