Dan Anderson’s back was in shame turned to me as he gazed down the valley.  “Friend,” said he, “I swore never to think of her once more.  Of course, the old ways had to end.  Her people wouldn’t have it.  She told me she could not be happy with a dreamer; that it was no time for dreamers; that the world was run by workers.  She told me—­well, I came West, and after a while a little farther West.

“I hadn’t begun, I know that.  It was fair enough to suppose I never would begin.  But at least I didn’t holler.  I sat down to read law.  Ah, don’t let’s talk of it.  Her face was on the pages.  I would brush it off, and read over a page a dozen times.  I had to force it into my mind.  I worked so hard—­but maybe it was all the better for me.  I not only learned my law, but I remember to this minute every misplaced comma and every broken type on every page I read; and I know how type looks, irregularly set around a roll of brown hair and a pair of gray eyes that look straight at you.  My boy, when the principles of law are back and under that kind of a page illustration, they are hard to get, and you don’t forget them when they’re yours.  It wasn’t hard to learn things in Princeton.  It’s the things out of college that are hard to learn.

“Well, you know how that is.  A fellow lives because this physical machine of ours is wound up for threescore years and ten, and unless the powers of evil get their fingers in the works, it runs.  Well, one time, after I was admitted to the bar back there, I was sitting one night reading Chitty on Pleading.  That was the worst of all the books.  Contracts, notes and bills, torts, replevin, and ejectment—­all those things were easy.  But when I got to Chitty, the girl’s face would always get on the page and stick there.  So one night, seeing that I was gone, I took Chitty on Pleading, girl’s face and all, and screwed it shut, tight and fast in the letter-press.  I allowed she couldn’t get out of there!  Then I pulled my freight.  I punched a burro into Heart’s Desire, two hundred miles, just as you did.  I have lived here, just as you have.  No life, no trouble, no woman—­why, you know, this is Heart’s Desire!”

“It was,” said I; “God bless it.”

“And amen!  We’d all have been in the Army, or burglary, or outlawry, if it hadn’t been for Heart’s Desire.  God bless it.”

“But she got out,” said I.  “Some one unscrewed the press?”

“Yes,” said Dan Anderson.  “She’s out.  They’re out.  I tell you, they’re out, all over the world!

“We were three hundred men here, and it was Heaven.  One vast commune, and yet no commune.  Everything there was if you asked for it, and nothing you could take if you didn’t ask.  Not a church, because there wasn’t a woman.  Not a courthouse, because there wasn’t any crime, and that because there wasn’t a woman.  Not a society—­not a home—­and I thank God for it.  I knew what it was back