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Broomhurst’s thoughts, for his part, were a good deal occupied with his hostess.

She was pretty, he thought, or perhaps it was that, with the wide, dry lonely plain as a setting, her fragile delicacy of appearance was invested with a certain flower-like charm.

“The silence here seems rather strange, rather appalling at first, when one is fresh from a town,” he pursued, after a moment’s pause; “but I suppose you’re used to it, eh, Drayton? How do /you/ find life here, Mrs. Drayton?” he asked, a little curiously, turning to her as he spoke.

She hesitated a second. “Oh, much the same as I should find it anywhere else, I expect,” she replied; “after all, one carries the possibilities of a happy life about with one; don’t you think so? The Garden of Eden wouldn’t necessarily make my life any happier, or less happy, than a howling wilderness like this. It depends on one’s self entirely.”

“Given the right Adam and Eve, the desert blossoms like the rose, in fact,” Broomhurst answered, lightly, with a smiling glance inclusive of husband and wife; “you two don’t feel as though you’d been driven out of Paradise, evidently.”

Drayton raised his eyes from his plate with a smile of total incomprehension.

“Great heavens! what an Adam to select!” thought Broomhurst, involuntarily, as Mrs. Drayton rose rather suddenly from the table.

“I’ll come and help with that packing-case,” John said, rising, in his turn, lumberingly from his place; “then we can have a smoke–eh! Kathie don’t mind, if we sit near the entrance.

The two men went out together, Broomhurst holding the lantern, for the moon had not yet risen. Mrs. Drayton followed them to the doorway, and, pushing the looped-up hanging farther aside, stepped out into the cool darkness.

Her heart was beating quickly, and there was a great lump in her throat that frightened her as though she were choking.

“And I am his /wife/–I /belong/ to him!” she cried, almost aloud.

She pressed both her hands tightly against her breast, and set her teeth, fighting to keep down the rising flood that threatened to sweep away her composure. “Oh, what a fool I am! What an hysterical fool of a woman I am!” she whispered below her breath. She began to walk slowly up and down outside the tent, in the space illumined by the lamplight, as though striving to make her outwardly quiet movements react upon the inward tumult. In a little while she had conquered; she quietly entered the tent, drew a low chair to the entrance, and took up a book, just as footsteps became audible. A moment afterward Broomhurst emerged from the darkness into the circle of light outside, and Mrs. Drayton raised her eyes from the pages she was turning to greet him with a smile.

“Are your things all right?”

“Oh, yes, more or less, thank you. I was a little concerned about a case of books, but it isn’t much damaged fortunately. Perhaps I’ve some you would care to look at?”

“The books will be a godsend,” she returned, with a sudden brightening of the eyes; “I was getting /desperate/–for books.”

“What are you reading now?” he asked, glancing at the volume that lay in her lap.

“It’s a Browning. I carry it about a good deal. I think I like to have it with me, but I don’t seem to read it much.”

“Are you waiting for a suitable optimistic moment?” Broomhurst inquired, smiling.

“Yes, now that you mention it, I think that must be why I am waiting,” she replied, slowly.

“And it doesn’t come–even in the Garden of Eden? Surely the serpent, pessimism, hasn’t been insolent enough to draw you into conversation with him?” he said, lightly.

“There has been no one to converse with at all–when John is away, I mean. I think I should have liked a little chat with the serpent immensely by way of a change,” she replied, in the same tone.

“Ah, yes,” Broomhurst said, with sudden seriousness; “it must be unbearably dull for you alone here, with Drayton away all day.”