She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she rose and joined him.  All human beings in Heart’s Desire that evening fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without possible resistance.

A short distance up the arroyo, toward the old abandoned stamp mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the Patos spring, far up on the mountain side.  At the end of this pipe, where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of her own.  Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose bush, now blossomless.  Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.

“This is our park,” said he, very gravely; “I hope you have enjoyed your stroll along the boulevard.  I hope, also, that the entertainment of the cow gentleman was not displeasing.”

“Not a word!” she answered, her cheek flushing; “you shall not rail at them.  These people are genuine.”

“I’m not apologizing,” he said quickly; “there are just a few things a fellow learns out here.  One is not to apologize; and another is not to beg.  Sit down.”  There were two white boulders beside which the trickle of water rippled.  Obeying him, she seated herself.  Presently Dan Anderson settled himself upon the other, and for a time they sat in silence.  The purple shadows had long ago deepened into half darkness, and as they looked up above the long, slow curve of old Carrizo, there rose the burnished silver of the wondrous moon of Heart’s Desire.  The bare and barren valley was softened and glorified into a strange, half-ghostly beauty.  The earth has few scenes more beautiful than Heart’s Desire at moonlight.  These two sat and gazed for a time.

“And so this is your world!” the girl spoke at length, more to herself than to him.

“Yes,” he replied almost savagely, sweeping his hand toward the mountain-rimmed horizon.  “Yes, it’s mine.”

“It is very beautiful,” she murmured softly.

“Yes,” said Dan Anderson, “it’s beautiful.  Some time there’ll be a man who’ll learn something in such a place as this.  I don’t know but I’ve learned a little bit myself in the last few years.”

“The years!” she whispered to herself.

“It seems forever,” said he.  “The time when a fellow’s taking his medicine always seems long, I reckon, I have almost forgotten my life of five years ago—­almost, except a part of it.  It’s been another world here.  Nothing matters much, does it?”

Whether there was now bitterness or softness in his speech she could not tell, but she found no reproach for herself in word or tone.

“Look,” said she at length, pointing down at the valley of Heart’s Desire, now bathed in the full flood of the unveiled moonlight.  “Look!  It is unspeakable.”