rskin I'd become a squaw at once. The fringes wouldn't look so bad if
they were done in leather."

"Mere accessories," Prime declared, meaning the clothes. "Civilization
prescribes them, their cut, fashion, and material. The buckskin Indians
have the best of us in this, as in many other things."

"The realities?" she queried.

"The simplicities," he qualified. "Life as we have lived it, and as we
shall probably live it again if we ever get out of this, is much too
complex. We are learning how few the real necessities are, and it is
good for the soul. I wouldn't take a fortune for what I've been learning
in these weeks, Lucetta."

"I have been learning, too," she admitted.

"Other things besides the use of a paddle and a camp-fire?"

"Many other things. I have forgotten the world I knew best, and it is
going to require a tremendous effort to remember it again when the need
arises."

"I shall never get back to where I was before," Prime asserted with
cheerful dogmatism. Then, in a fresh burst of confidence: "Lucetta, I'm
coming to suspect that I have always been the merest surface-skimmer. I
thought I knew life a little, and was even brash enough to attempt to
write about it. I thought I could visualize humanity and its
possibilities, but what I saw was only the outer skin--of people and of
things. But my greatest impertinence has been in my handling of women."

"Injustice?" she inquired.

"Not intentional; just crass ignorance. I know now that I was merely
imitative, choosing for models the character-drawings of men who knew
even less about women than I did. Vapid sentimentality was about as far
as I could get. It revolts me to think of it now."

Her laugh was as unrestrained as that of a child. "You amuse me, Donald.
Most women are hopelessly sentimental. Don't you know that?"

"You are not," he retorted soberly.

"How do you know?"

"Heavens and earth! if I haven't had an opportunity to find out----"

"You haven't," she returned quietly; "not the least little morsel of an
opportunity. A few days ago we were thrown together--a man and a woman
who were total strangers, to live or die as the chance might fall. I
defy any one to be sentimental in such circumstances. Sentiment thrives
only in the artificialities; they are the very breath of its life. If
men and women could know each other as they really are, there would be
fewer marriages, by far."

"And the few would be far happier," Prime put in.

"Do