“Not very many.  My, old-maid aunt didn’t like me overmuch, I believe; and I wasn’t here often.  My mother and I lived far down the street.  A big apartment-house stands there now, I noticed as I was walking out here this afternoon—­the `Verema,’ it is called, absurdly enough!”

“Ray Vilas lives there,” volunteered Hedrick, not altering his position.

“Vilas?” said the visitor politely, with a casual recollection that the name had been once or twice emphasized by the youth at dinner.  “I don’t remember Vilas among the old names here.”

“It wasn’t, I guess,” said Hedrick.  “Ray Vilas has only been here about two years.  He came from Kentucky.”

“A great friend of yours, I suppose.”

“He ain’t a boy,” said Hedrick, and returned to silence without further explanation.

“How cool and kind the stars are to-night,” said Cora, very gently.

She leaned forward from her chair, extending a white arm along the iron railing of the porch; bending toward Corliss, and speaking toward him and away from Hedrick in as low a voice as possible, probably entertaining a reasonable hope of not being overheard.

“I love things that are cool and kind,” she said.  “I love things that are cool and strong.  I love iron.”  She moved her arm caressingly upon the railing.  “I love its cool, smooth touch.  Any strong life must have iron in it.  I like iron in men.”

She leaned a very little closer to him.

“Have you iron in you, Mr. Corliss?” she asked.

At these words the frayed edge of Hedrick’s broad white collar was lifted perceptibly from his coat, as if by a shudder passing over the back and shoulders beneath.

“If I have not,” answered Corliss in a low voice, “I will have—­now!”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

“Dear lady,” he began—­and it was an effective beginning, for a sigh of pleasure parted her lips as he spoke—­“there is nothing interesting to tell.  I have spent a very commonplace life.”

“I think not.  You shouldn’t call any life commonplace that has escaped this!” The lovely voice was all the richer for the pain that shook it now.  “This monotony, this unending desert of ashes, this death in life!”

“This town, you mean?”

“This prison, I mean!  Everything.  Tell me what lies outside of it.  You can.”

“What makes you think I can?”

“I don’t need to answer that.  You understand perfectly.”

Valentine Corliss drew in his breath with a sound murmurous of delight, and for a time they did not speak.

“Yes,” he said, finally, “I think I do.”

“There are meetings in the desert,” he went on, slowly.  “A lonely traveller finds another at a spring, sometimes.”

“And sometimes they find that they speak the same language?”

His answer came, almost in a whisper: 

“`Even as you and I.’”