Then it was that Venters’s primitive, childlike mood, like a savage’s, seeing, yet unthinking, gave way to the encroachment of civilized thought.  The world had not been made for a single day’s play or fancy or idle watching.  The world was old.  Nowhere could be gotten a better idea of its age than in this gigantic silent tomb.  The gray ashes in Venters’s hand had once been bone of a human being like himself.  The pale gloom of the cave had shadowed people long ago.  He saw that Bess had received the same shock—­could not in moments such as this escape her feeling living, thinking destiny.

“Bern, people have lived here,” she said, with wide, thoughtful eyes.

“Yes,” he replied.

“How long ago?”

“A thousand years and more.”

“What were they?”

“Cliff-dwellers.  Men who had enemies and made their homes high out of reach.”

“They had to fight?”

“Yes.”

“They fought for—­what?”

“For life.  For their homes, food, children, parents—­for their women!”

“Has the world changed any in a thousand years?”

“I don’t know—­perhaps a little.”

“Have men?”

“I hope so—­I think so.”

“Things crowd into my mind,” she went on, and the wistful light in her eyes told Venters the truth of her thoughts.  “I’ve ridden the border of Utah.  I’ve seen people—­know how they live—­but they must be few of all who are living.  I had my books and I studied them.  But all that doesn’t help me any more.  I want to go out into the big world and see it.  Yet I want to stay here more.  What’s to become of us?  Are we cliff-dwellers?  We’re alone here.  I’m happy when I don’t think.  These—­these bones that fly into dust—­they make me sick and a little afraid.  Did the people who lived here once have the same feelings as we have?  What was the good of their living at all?  They’re gone!  What’s the meaning of it all—­of us?”

“Bess, you ask more than I can tell.  It’s beyond me.  Only there was laughter here once—­and now there’s silence.  There was life—­and now there’s death.  Men cut these little steps, made these arrow-heads and mealing-stones, plaited the ropes we found, and left their bones to crumble in our fingers.  As far as time is concerned it might all have been yesterday.  We’re here to-day.  Maybe we’re higher in the scale of human beings—­in intelligence.  But who knows?  We can’t be any higher in the things for which life is lived at all.”

“What are they?”

“Why—­I suppose relationship, friendship—­love.”

“Love!”

“Yes.  Love of man for woman—­love of woman for man.  That’s the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself.”

She said no more.  Wistfulness of glance deepened into sadness.

“Come, let us go,” said Venters.

Action brightened her.  Beside him, holding his hand she slipped down the shelf, ran down the long, steep slant of sliding stones, out of the cloud of dust, and likewise out of the pale gloom.