me a perscription--damn't, but
I told 'em t' turn it in t' the Horspital. Any man w'd a' done same
for a yellow dog. What d'y' want t' give a fellow a medal for not
bein' stinkin' coward?"

Eleanor laughed. It was a happy silver laugh like the light on the
Ridge cataracts. Somehow, the one-armed stage driver with his
unconscious heroism and equally unconscious profanity gave her a sense
of the big wholesome unconscious outdoor world, just as the lavender
silks and undertaker's plumes and tallow smile inside smothered her
with a drugged sense of heavy unwholesome musk. The one-time miner did
not know it; but what Eleanor was saying to herself was--"So much bad
in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us." Then she
thought of the Senator and his genial smile and his voice soft as a
woman's, and his love of flowers. He, too, must have his vein of
heroism, if one could only find it. She thought and thought as the
tandem grays arched their necks at the sound of the tramway bells in
the nearing city; thought and thought, vague wordless thoughts full of
hope; vague womanish thoughts that women have thought since time began
of finding that magic vein of heroism in the Man that is to transmute
slag into gold, hog into human, and greed into generosity, and lust
into love; thought and thought the gentle womanish hoping-against-hope
thoughts that women have worn out their lives thinking and enslaved
their bodies and pawned their souls. If only one could find _that_
vein in the Senator, the battle would be won without the letting of
blood and smashing of reputations; as if peace without victory were
ever worth while since time began.

Then, the stage was rattling over the pressed brick pavement of Smelter
City; and the tandem grays were pretending to shy at the electric cars;
and the one-armed driver came near expectorating his entire internal
anatomy out of sheer joy and pride in the arched necks and the frail
driver with the black curls under the broad brimmed English sailor hat
handling the reins. She had pulled off her heavy buckskin gloves; and
she never knew how absurdly like matches her fingers looked to the big
one-time miner beside her; nor how the exhilaration brought the tints
of the painters' flower to her cheeks and the light of the Alpine pools
to her eyes. Every man on the street turned and looked back, while the
gold teeth inside blinked with self conscious certainty that _they_ did
it; and