ifference. It was the one fortuitous touch needed to
open that inner chamber of her heart, closed, hitherto, even to her own
consciousness. And when the door was opened she looked within and saw
what no woman sees but once in her life, and having once seen, will die
unwed in very truth if any man but one call her wife.

Once more the drumming wheels began the overture; the lighted bay-window
of the station slipped backward into the night, and the bloodshot eye of
another switch-lamp peered in at the window and was gone; but Gertrude
neither saw nor heard. The things of time and place were around and
about her, but not within. A new song was in her heart, its words
inarticulate as yet, but its harmonies singing with the music of the
spheres. A little later, when the "Flying Kestrel" was again in
mid-flitting, and the separate noises of the train had sunk into the
soothing under-roar, she crept into her berth wet-eyed and thankful, and
presently went to sleep too happy to harbor anxious thought for the
morrow of uncertainties.

XII

THE ANCIENTS AND INVALIDS

Brockway was up betimes the following morning, though not of his own
free will. Two hours before the "Flying Kestrel" was due in Denver, the
porter of the Tadmor awakened him at the command of the irascible
gentleman with the hock-bottle shoulders and diaphanous nose. While the
passenger agent was sluicing his face in the wash-room some one prodded
him from behind, and a thin, high-pitched voice wedged itself into the
thunderous silence.

"Mr. ah--Brockway; I understand that you are purposing to take the party
to ah--Feather Plume or ah--Silver Feather, or some such place to-day,
and I ah--protest! I have no desire to leave Denver until my ticket is
made to conform to my stipulations, sir."

Brockway had soap in his eyes, and the porter had carefully hidden the
towels; for which cause his reply was brief and to the point.

"Please wait till I get washed and dressed before you begin on me, won't
you?"

"Wait? Do you say ah--wait? I have been doing nothing but wait, sir,
ever since my ah--stipulations were ignored. It's an outrage, sir,
I----"

Brockway had found a towel and was using it vigorously as a
counter-irritant.

"For Heaven's sake, go away and let me alone until I can get my clothes
on!" he exclaimed. "I promised you yesterday you should have the thirty
days that you don't need."

The aggrieved one had his ticket out, but he put it away