loneliness on the range. With the gates of good-nature opened, a
veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It glittered in their eyes, it
rose to their lips in a wild laughter. They seemed to be dancing more
furiously fast in order to forget the life which they had left, and to
which they must return.

And through all the cheapness there was a great note of poetry as well;
but one caught this only by a sense of intuition, or by remembering
that these were the conquerors of the bitter nature of the
mountain-desert. There was beauty here, the beauty of strength in the
men and a brown loveliness in the girls; just as in the music, the
blatancy of the rattling dish-pan and the blaring trombone were more
than balanced by the real skill of the violinists, who kept a high,
sweet, singing tone through all the clamor.

One could close his ears to the rest of the noise, if he strove to do
so, and hear nothing but that harmonious moaning of the strings, steady
and clear, like the aspirations of a man divorced from the facts of his
weakness and his crudeness in practical life.

And Pierre le Rouge and Jacqueline? They stood aghast for a moment
when that crash of noise broke around them; but they came from a life
where there was nothing of beauty except the lonely strength of the
mountains and the appalling silences of the stars that roll above the
desert. Almost at once they caught the overtone of human joyousness,
and they turned with strange smiles to each other, and it was "Pierre?"
"Jack?" Then a nod, and she was in his arms, and they glided into the
dance.

CHAPTER XXII

THE OVERTONE

When a crowd gathers in the street, there rises a babel of voices, a
confused and pointless clamor, no matter what the purpose of the
gathering, until some man who can think as well as shout begins to
speak. Then the crowd murmurs a moment, and after a few seconds
composes itself to listen.

So it was with the noise in the hall when Pierre and Jacqueline began
to dance. First there were smiles of derision and envy around them,
but after a moment a little hush came where they moved, and then men
began to note the smile of the girl and the whiteness of that round
throat, and the grace of the bare, tapering arms.

So a whisper went around the room, and there began a craning of necks
and an exchange of nods. All that crowd became in a moment no more
than the chorus which fills the background of the stage when the
principals st