He had fallen to musing again, and it is doubtful if he heard her.  He saw before him immense, primeval forests, black, shadowy; vast, sluggish rivers, above which hung a thick and fever-laden air; trees from whose topmost branches swung gorgeous, ephemeral flowers; and then long stretches of yellow beach, where a brazen ocean tumbled and hissed.  Then many cities, squalid and splendid, colorful and fantastic as the erection of a dream, and through all these he saw himself ever passing, appearing and reappearing, and ever scattering his substance, not the substance of money alone; that was still left him; but the substance of youth, of early promise, of illusion and hopes.

Pearl waited a long time, it seemed to her, for him to speak.  At last she broke the silence.  “And then?” she said.

He roused from his preoccupations and brushed back the wing of hair from his brow.  “I realized that I was living, had always lived on husks, and that was what caused the restless fever in my blood, my heart was always restless; and then I began to dream down there in the tropics, really dream at night of these mountains just as you see them here, and in the day time I thought of them and longed for them, as a man whose throat is dry with thirst longs for cool water.  Then, presently, I began to have brief, fleeting visions of them by day.  And gradually the longing for the hills became so intense that I started out in search of them.  I traveled about a good bit, and then drifted here.  The place suited me, so I stayed.”

She looked at him puzzled and half-fearfully, wondering if he was quite sane.  “And will you stay here always?” she asked.

“Oh, as to that, I can’t say.  Perhaps.  I hope so.  Life is full here.”

“Full!” she interrupted him.  “And life!  You call this life?” She laughed in harsh scorn.

“Don’t you?” He looked at her with those blue, clear eyes that seemed to see through her and around her and beyond her.

“I!” Her glance was full of resentful passion; tightly she closed her lips; but there was something about him which seemed to force her to reveal herself and, presently, she began again.  “I am like a coyote with a broken paw.  It goes off by itself and hides until it can limp around.  But life, real life, is all out there.”  She threw out her hands as indicating the world beyond the mountains.  “If you call this life, you’ve never lived.”

He ignored this, smiling faintly.

“What is real life to you?” he asked.

So compelling was his manner, for no one could shock Seagreave and no one could force him to condemn, that she almost said, “To love and be loved.”  But she resisted her impulse to voice this.  “Until a little while before I came here, life meant to dance.  I know, though, what it is to get tired of the very things you think you love the most.  After I’ve stayed a while in the desert, I’ve just got to see the lights of the city streets, to smell the stage, and to dance to the big audiences; but after a bit, the buildings and the people begin to crowd on me and push me and I feel as if I couldn’t breathe, then I’ve just got to get back to the desert again.”