I know, because you just happened to
get to this place. Sometimes when I look at you I just want to take
you by the shoulder and _shake_ you!--because you don't half know how
lucky you are. Why, all that makes the world such a rotten place to
live in is because the people are starved all the while for beauty.
Not beauty you can buy, but beauty like this around us, that you can
feast on--"

"And I get pretty well fed up on it, too, sometimes," Jack put in,
still perverse.

"And for that I pity you. I was going to wash the dishes, but you can
do it yourself. I'm going out where I can forget there are any people
in the world. I'll never have another night like this--it would be too
much luck for one person."

She set down her cup, which she had been tilting back and forth in her
fingers while she spoke. She got up, pulled Jack's heavy sweater off a
nail in the corner, and went out without another word to him or a look
toward him. She seemed to be absolutely sincere in her calm disposal
of him as something superfluous and annoying. She seemed also to be
just as sincere in her desire for a close companionship with the
solitude that surrounded them.

Jack looked after her, puzzled. But he had discovered too many
contradictory moods and emotions in his own nature to puzzle long over
Marion's sudden changes. Three months ago he would have called her
crazy, or accused her of posing. Now, however, he understood well
enough the spell of that tremendous view. He had felt it too often and
too deeply to grudge her one long feast for her imagination. So he
took her at her word and let her go.

He tidied the small room and sent in another report of the headlong
rush of the fire and the direction of the wind that fanned it. He
learned that all Genessee was out, fighting to keep the flames from
sweeping down across the valley. Three hundred men were fighting it,
the supervisor told him. They would check it on the downhill slope,
where it would burn more slowly; and if the wind did not change in the
night it would probably be brought under control by morning. After
that the supervisor very discreetly inquired after the welfare of the
young lady who had telephoned. Had she found any means of getting back
to her camp, or of sending any word?

Jack replied she had not, and that there was no likelihood of her
getting away before daylight. There were too many burning trees and
stumps and brush piles on the ground in the burned strip, h