He turned quickly.  “You find it pleasant?” he said, “then the mountains must be beginning to exert their spell upon you.”

“I don’t know,” she answered slowly; “I don’t hate them like I used to; but I’ll never really care for them.  I love the desert.”

“You must tell me what you find in the desert,” he said.  She looked out broodingly at the ranges, the strange sphynx look in her eyes, but she did not answer him.  At last she withdrew her gaze from the hills and glanced rather contemptuously at the book in his hands.  “Don’t you ever work?” she asked abruptly.  “You’re a man.”

“Sometimes I work down in the mines, if I want to,” he replied carelessly; “but I rarely want to.  Sometimes, too, I write a little.”

“But don’t you want to work all the time with your hands or your head, like other men do?” she persisted.

“No,” he returned.  “To what profit would it be?” There was just a trace of bitterness in his voice.

“But you are strong and a man,” she spoke now with unveiled scorn.  “You wouldn’t be content always to sit up in a mountain cabin by the fire like an old woman.”

“Wouldn’t I?” he asked.  “Why not?” The bitterness was more apparent now, and a shadow had fallen over his face.  Pearl realized that, for the moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a recluse in the lonely and isolated mountains.

It was a more or less conventional story.  All events which penetrate deeply into human experience are.  They are vital and living, because universal; therefore we call them conventional.  Seagreave had been left an orphan at an early age, and as he inherited wealth and was born of a line of gentlemen and scholars who had given the world much of service in their day, his material environment offered him no obstacles to be overcome.  There were no barriers between him and any normal desires and ambitions, nothing to excite his emulation with suggestions that there were forbidden and therefore infinitely desirable gardens in which he might wander a welcome guest.  But life sets a premium on hard knocks.  It is usually the bantling which is cast upon the rocks who wins most of the prizes, having acquired in a hard school powers of resistance and endurance.

Seagreave’s pleasant experiences continued through youth into manhood.  When quite young he became engaged to a charming girl about his own age whom his guardians considered eminently suitable.  Among many friendships, he had one so congenial that he fancied no circumstance could arise which could strain or break this tie.

And then, on the very eve of his marriage, his sweetheart had eloped with this friend of his boyhood, and he had not only this wound of the heart to endure, but also the consciousness that he was pilloried as a blind fool by all of his acquaintances.