He examined her furtively when he could and was conscious that when his face was turned in profile, she, too, was studying him anxiously, as only a woman in such a situation might. Whatever it was that she learned was not unpleasing to her, for, as he raised his hand to carry the tea to his lips, her voice was raised in a different tone.

“Your hands!” she said. “They’re all cut and bleeding.”

He glanced at his broken knuckles impersonally.

“Are they? I hadn’t noticed before. You see, I hadn’t any hatchet.”

“Won’t you let me—hadn’t you better bathe them in the water?”

“A bath wouldn’t hurt them, would it?”

“I didn’t mean that. Don’t they hurt?”

“No, not at all. But I wish I had Joe’s axe.”

“Who’s Joe?”

[19]

[19]

“My guide.”

“Oh.”

She questioned no further; for here, she realized instinctively, were the ends of the essential, the beginnings of the personal. And so the conversation quickly turned to practical considerations. Of one thing she was now assured—her companion was a gentleman. What kind of a gentleman she had not guessed, for there were many kinds, she had discovered; but there was nothing unduly alarming in his manner or appearance and she concluded for the present to accept him, with reservations, upon his face value.

His body fed, Gallatin felt singularly comfortable. The problems that had hung so thickly around his head a while ago, were going up with the smoke of the fire. Here were meat, drink and society. Were not these, after all, the end and aim of human existence? Had the hoary earth with all its vast treasures ever been able to produce more? He took his pouch from his pocket, and asking if he might smoke, lit his pipe with a coal from the fire (for matches were precious) and sank back at the girl’s feet. The time for confidences, were there to be any, had arrived. She felt it in the sudden stoppage of the desultory 

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