p, in that country where perspiration was so
little known. "And you!" he said. "But then, it didn't take much
brains to guess that. It was the same way with you. We all of us came
here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, there was a Girl."

So now we both were silent. Indeed, all the world was silent. The
calm valley lay unwinking in the sun. The grave mountains stood about
unperturbed, unagitated, calm. The blue sky swept above, peaceful,
unflecked by any moving cloud. There was not a leaf in all that land
to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple. It was a
world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with
nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world
gone by. Here was no place for memories or dreams. The rush of
another world might go on. Folk might live and love, grieve and joy,
and sorrow and die, and it mattered nothing. These things came not to
Heart's Desire.

Presently Dan Anderson was guilty of a thing revolutionary, horrible!
He sat silent as long as he could, but at length there broke from him a
groan that was half a sob. He rose and flung out an arm at the great
blue heaven. "Girl!" he cried. "Girl!" Then he sank down, burying
his face in his hands. One might have heard falling, faint and far
off, the shattered crystals of the walls that had long hedged sacredly
about the valley of Heart's Desire. One might have heard, sweeping the
soft and silken curtains of its oblivion, the rough rush of a
disturbing wind!

Dan Anderson's back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the
valley. "Friend," said he, "I swore never to think of her once more.
Of course, the old ways had to end. Her people wouldn't have it. She
told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for
dreamers; that the world was run by workers. She told me--well, I came
West, and after a while a little farther West.

"I hadn't begun, I know that. It was fair enough to suppose I never
would begin. But at least I didn't holler. I sat down to read law.
Ah, don't let's talk of it. Her face was on the pages. I would brush
it off, and read over a page a dozen times. I had to force it into my
mind. I worked so hard--but maybe it was all the better for me. I not
only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced
comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type
looks, irregularly set around