Adelle
had taken from Major Pound and Nelson Carhart who are doubtless still
enunciating the same trite remarks at the dinner-table and in their
clubs with a profound conviction of thinking seriously upon important
topics. All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast
up in Adelle's path, were good people enough--some of them earnest and
serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the
wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple,
clear-thinking human companion.

The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a
knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the
first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life.
It was not very important thinking, perhaps, but it had for Adelle the
attraction of freshness and sincerity. The mason stimulated the mistress
of Highcourt intellectually and spiritually, which would have made the
good ladies at luncheon with her that day laugh or do worse. Adelle felt
that he could help her to understand many things that she was beginning
to think about, that were stirring in her dumb soul and troubling her.
And she knew that she could talk to him about them, as she could not
talk to George Pointer nor Major Pound nor even Archie. In her simple
way, when she discovered what she wanted, she went directly after it
until she was satisfied. She meant to talk more with the young stone
mason of the widespread race of Clark.

The next time Adelle made the ascent of the hill behind Highcourt she
took her little boy with her, and after wandering about the eucalyptus
wood with him in search of flowers sent him back to the house with his
nurse and kept on over the hill to the shack where Clark lived. She
examined the tar-paper structure more carefully, noticing that the mason
had set out some vegetables beside the door and that a little vine was
climbing up the paper facade of the temporary home. She knew that the
mason was still at his work below, and so she ventured to peek into the
shack. Everything within the one small room was clean and orderly. There
was a rough bunk in one corner, which was made into a neat bed, and
beneath this were arranged in pairs the man's extra shoes, one pair
bleached by lime and another newer pair of modern cut for dress use. In
one corner was a small camper's stove with a piece of drain-pipe for
chimney; a board table, one or two boxes, and some automo