“I am still wondering,” he persisted gravely.

“Wondering if I know?” She spoke in the sweetly practical tone of one who is firmly resolved not to permit any nonsense.  “Yes, I do know—­that is, I know there are ways in which I might be useful to you.”

“For instance?”

“Well, there are some little—­some very little things I might tell you if we were friends—­real friends,” she made this plain, “just as two men might be.”

“But the very last things two men would tell each other,” he was laughing now, “are the little things—­the things about slang and walking-sticks and oak furniture.”

So he hadn’t forgotten!  The recollection of her impertinence confused her, and she hastened to make light of it by protesting gaily:  “I was only joking.  Of course, you didn’t take that seriously.”

“I don’t know how much more seriously,” he replied emphatically, “I could have taken it.”

“But you haven’t thought of it since?”

“What would you say if I told you I hadn’t thought of anything else?”

“Then I wish I hadn’t said it.”  She was obviously worried by his admission.  “It was horrid of me—­perfectly horrid.  I ought to have been ashamed of myself.  I had no right to criticise you, and you have been so heavenly kind.”

“After that”—­he appeared to be hammering the idea into her mind—­“I was so grateful I’d have done almost anything.  Do you know,” he burst out with evident emotion, “that was the first criticism—­I mean downright honest criticism—­I’ve ever had in my life.  Nobody—­that is nobody who knew—­ever thought enough of me before to tell me where I was wrong.”

It was all a pathetic mistake, she saw, but she saw also that it was impossible for her to explain it away.  She could not tell him the ugly truth that she had been merely laughing at him when he had believed, in his beautiful simplicity, that she was speaking as a friend.  Though she felt ashamed, humbled, remorseful, there was nothing that she could say now which would not hurt him more than the original misunderstanding had done.

In her desire to atone as far as possible, she remarked recklessly:  “I only wish I could be of some real help to you.”

“You can,” he answered frankly.  “You can let me come to see you sometimes before I go West again.”

“You are going back in the spring?”

He laughed happily, drawing himself erect with a large, free movement as if he needed to stretch his limbs.  “I can’t stand more than six months of the East, and I’ve been here a year now, off and on.  After a time I begin to want air.  I want to breathe.”

“Yet you lived here once.”

“A sort of life, yes, but that don’t count.”

“What does count with you, I wonder?” She was smiling up at him, and as they passed under a street light her eyes shone with a misty brightness through her veil of dotted net.

For a minute he thought over her question.  “I guess fighting does,” he answered at last.  “Getting on in spite of hard knocks, and smashing things that stand in your way.  I like the feeling that comes after you’ve put through a big deal or got the better of the desert or the mountains.  I got joy in Arizona out of my first silver mine; but I didn’t get the joy exactly out of the silver.  I don’t suppose you understand.”