She glanced at him suspiciously.  She was uncertain how to meet this frank acceptance of comradeship, free yet from the intrusion of sex.  “Maybe,” she acquiesced a little doubtfully.  Then she drew her brows together.  “I don’t want to learn anything about the mountains,” she cried, all the heaviness and the dumb revolt of her spirit finding a voice.  “And I don’t want ever to go back to the desert again; and I don’t even want to dance,” looking at him in a sort of wild wonder as if this were unbelievable, “not even to dance.”

He realized that she was suffering from some grief against which she struggled, and which she refused to accept.  “You will not feel so always,” he said.  “It is because you are unhappy now.”

There was consolation in his sincerity, in his sympathy, in his entire belief in what he was saying, and it was with difficulty that she repressed an outburst of her sullen sorrow.  “Yes,” her mouth worked, “I am unhappy, and I won’t be, I won’t be.  I never was before.  It is all in here, like a dead weight, a drag, a cold hand clutching me.”  She pressed both hands to her heart.  Then she drew back as if furious at having so far revealed herself.

“That heals.”  He leaned forward to speak.  “I am telling you the truth!  That heals and is forgotten.  I know that that is so.”

“I know who you are,” she said suddenly.  “I have been trying to think ever since I heard him,” she nodded toward Jose, bent over his cards, “say ‘Saint Harry.’  I remember now.  I have heard Hughie often speak of you.  They say that you are good, that if any one is sick you nurse him, and that if any one is broke you help him.  They all come to you.”

“Yes, ’Saint Harry’!” he laughed.  “Oh, it’s funny, but let them call me any name they please as long as it amuses them.  What difference does it make?  I am glad Hughie is coming up, I want some music.  He puts the mountains into music for me.”

“And for me.”  She smiled and then sighed bitterly, gazing drearily into the fire, now a bed of glowing embers.  Then latent and feminine curiosity stirred in her thoughts and voiced itself.  “Why are you here?” she said.  “Why does a man like you stay here?”

His elbow rested on the arm of his chair, his chin in his hand, his gaze too upon the fading embers.  “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, “I had to come.”

“Where from?” she still followed her instinct of curiosity.

“From the husks”—­he turned his head and smiled at her—­“from a far country where I had wasted my substance in riotous living.”

She frowned a little.  She was not used to this type of man, nor had she met any one who used hyperbole in conversation.  At first she fancied that he might be chaffing her, but she was too intelligent to harbor that idea, so convincing was his innate sincerity; but nevertheless, she meant to go cautiously.

Again she questioned him:  “From what far country?”