ht for governor, as Broadway,
marionettes on a stage, turmoil and unrest? Bad cess to 'em, I'm going
to bed," she ended abruptly.

"Good-night, Boy-Girl-Woman."

When her light was out he spoke through the open window: "Why don't you
want to be intimate with me?"

"Oh, I think it's more interesting not to be," she answered.

"Do you think our present relations are interesting?"

"Rather," she answered sleepily.

They rarely came to the cabin after this except for supplies and fresh
clothes. Day after day they spent in the saddle up on the heights. Bill
found them insatiable, they gave him no rest. Barbara was introduced to
a trout line and a mountain brook trout of her own catching. After that
she insisted on visiting all the streams for miles around, where trout
were to be found.

"Talk about a taste for whiskey, it's nothing to a taste for trout,"
said Bob.

"More exclusive, too," Paul added. "You can get whiskey on every corner
in New York, but real fresh mountain trout you travel for."

"And work for, and suffer after!"

The usual plan was to break camp early. Paul and Barbara would fish
upstream, while Bill led the ponies and met them at an appointed place
to eat the catch. In her hip boots, with her basket on her shoulder, Bob
waded the swift-running streams, or stood on the rocks above, the sun
bright, the air like a new life fluid, time measured only by an
ever-pursuing appetite. Long talks with Paul at night, under the stars,
hours of silence, save for a word now and then to her pony, sleep in the
open, with a plunge in an ice pool at dawn. Life was reduced to the
lowest common denominator, the natural companionship of man, woman, and
nature.

"How do you suppose we ever wandered so far away from the real things?"
she asked him one day.

"What do you count the real things?" curiously.

"Life in the open; simple relations of people."

"Is Bill your highest ideal of man? By that definition he has the things
that count."

"He's happier than either of us."

"Happy nothing! He's contented--tight in the only rut he knows. His mind
is as active as rutebaga." She laughed at the homely word, but he went
on with the idea. "Do you think he thrills at your mountains--sings rude
hymns to your sunsets? Not he. The mountains are made for tourists,
tourists are made for guides. As for sunset, well, that means time to
sleep."

"Oh, Paul," she protested.

"It's true. Your 'plain man of the soil' is a her