out some of the constellations to me, and said the only time
he'd ever seen the stars bigger was one still night on the Indian Ocean,
when he was on his way back from Singapore. He would never forget that
night, he said, the stars were so wonderful, so big, so close, so soft
and luminous. But the northern stars were different. They were without
the orange tone that belongs to the South. They seemed remoter and more
awe-inspiring, and there was always a green tone to their whiteness.

Then we got talking about "furrin parts" and Percy asked me if I'd ever
seen Naples at night from San Martino, and I asked him if he'd ever seen
Broadway at night from the top of the Times Building. Then he asked me
if I'd ever watched Paris from Montmartre, or seen the Temple of Neptune
at Paestum bathed in Lucanian moonlight--which I very promptly told him I
had, for it was on the ride home from Paestum that a certain person had
proposed to me. We talked about temples and Greek Gods and the age of
the world and Indian legends until I got downright sleepy. Then Percy
threw away his last cigarette and got up. He said "Good night;" I said
"Good night;" and he went into the shack. He said he'd leave the door
open, in case I called. There were just the two of us, between earth and
sky, that night, and not another soul within a radius of seven miles of
any side of us. He was very glad to have some one to talk to. He's
probably a year or two older than I am, but I am quite motherly with
him. And he is shockingly incompetent, as a homesteader, from the look
of his shack. But he's a gentleman, almost too "Gentle," I sometimes
feel, a Laodicean, mentally over-refined until it leaves him unable to
cope with real life. He's one of those men made for being a "spectator,"
and not an actor, in life. And there's something so absurd about his
being where he is that I feel sorry for him.

I slept like a log. Once I fell asleep, I forgot about the hard ground,
and the smell of the horse-blankets, and the fact that I'd lost my poor
Dinky-Dunk's team. When I woke up it was the first gray of dawn. Two men
were standing side by side, looking at me under the wagon. One was
Percy, and the other was Dinky-Dunk himself.

He'd got home by three o'clock in the morning, by hurrying, for he was
nervous about me being alone. But he found the house empty, the team
standing beside the corral, and me missing. Naturally, it wasn't a very
happy situation. Poor Dinky-Dunk hi