“Sorry,” he said, in his explosive way, “that we part so soon.”  He held her hand a second longer, gave it a sudden pressure, and was gone.

Honora shut the door behind him reluctantly.

“So like Karl!” she laughed.  “It’s the second time he’s been in my house since I was married.”

“You’d think we had the plague, the way he runs from us,” said David.

“Oh,” responded Honora, not at all disturbed, “Karl is forever on important business.  He’s probably been to New York to some directors’ meeting.  Now he’s on his way to Denver, he says—­’men waiting.’  That’s Karl’s way.  To think of his dashing up here between trains to see my babies!” The tears came to her eyes.  “Don’t you think he’s fine, Kate?”

The truth was, there seemed to be a sort of vacuum in the air since he had left—­as if he had taken the vitality of it with him.

“But where does he live?” she asked Honora.

“Address him beyond the Second Divide, and he’ll be reached.  Everybody knows him there.  His post-office bears his own name—­Wander.”

“He’s a miner?”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, by process of elimination.  What else could he be?”

“Nothing else in all the world,” agreed David Fulham.  “I tell Honora he’s a bit mad.”

“No, no,” Honora laughed; “he’s not mad; he’s merely Western.  How startled you look, Kate—­as if you had seen an apparition.”

* * * * *

It was decided that Kate was to stay there at the Fulhams’, and to use one of their several unoccupied rooms.  Kate chose one that looked over the Midway, and her young strength made nothing of the two flights of stairs which she had to climb to get to it.  At first the severity of the apartment repelled her, but she had no money with which to make it more to her taste, and after a few hours its very barrenness made an appeal to her.  It seemed to be like her own life, in need of decoration, and she was content to let things take their course.  It seemed probable that roses would bloom in their time.

No one, it transpired, ate in the house.

“I found out,” explained Honora, “that I couldn’t be elaborately domestic and have a career, too, so I went, with some others of similar convictions and circumstances, into a cooeperative dining-room scheme.”

Kate gave an involuntary shrug of her shoulders.

“You think that sounds desolate?  Wait till you see us all together.  This talk about ‘home’ is all very well, but I happen to know—­and I fancy you do, too—­that home can be a particularly stultifying place.  When people work as hard as we do, a little contact with outsiders is stimulating.  But you’ll see for yourself.  Mrs. Dennison, a very fine woman, a widow, looks after things for us.  Dr. von Shierbrand, one of our number, got to calling the place ‘The Caravansary,’ and now we’ve all fallen into the way of it.”