's
got _you_ that you did n't stay put?' she demanded. 'Here I've had a rush
of words to the mouth and told you all I know and I don't know a thing
about you.'

"I found my voice sufficiently to tell her my case was very different.

"'Huh!' she said, 'I may n't know much, but I'm wise to this; the
folks that have real reasons for a smash-up don't have to come to
Reno. They mostly can get their papers on the spot. I guess we're all
in the same boat out here. We're just taking what we want.'

"I felt as if I had been struck with a sledge-hammer when she said
that, and her eyes seemed to be boring through me like gimlets. I
thought I should scream if she said another word.

"'Let's talk about it in the morning,' I said, 'if you'll excuse me.
I'm so tired I simply can't keep my eyes open.'

{117}

"That was n't true. She went to sleep almost instantly, and slept like
a baby. I lay beside her, wide awake for hours. What she was, and what
she said, had turned a key in my brain. A host of thoughts I didn't
know I had came trooping out of some hidden room, and they marched and
counter-marched across my mind all night."

Desire got up and began to walk about the room restlessly in her
absorption as she recalled all this.

"It was wonderful, Uncle Ben. I wish I could make you understand.
First of all, I recognized that what she said was absolutely true. I
said to myself, Desire, you are a civilized, cultivated, mature,
distinguished-looking person, well born and well reared--but what has
it all done for you? It has, precisely, conducted you to Reno, Nevada.
This girl beside you is {118} uncivilized, uneducated, crude, young,
clearly of very common clay. And what has it all done for her but
conduct her to Reno, Nevada,--where she finds you, daughter of the
Pilgrims. Well met, sister!'

"It was very bitter to think that of myself," said my niece, stopping
by my chair. "It may sound foolish, Uncle Ben, but my friends have
always insisted I was a _schoene Seele_. I, a beautiful soul! I, a soul
at all! A white light that I could not shut my eyes against seemed to
beat down into my brain. I saw that I was just like the girl beside me
in her incredible callousness,--even like the fat, self-satisfied,
blonde women I had seen in the town. Oh, those common, common people!
I had thought myself as fine as silk, as tempered as steel, yes, and
as pure as flame! But I, too, was a brute.

{119}

"I thought and thought. I thought o