Marie. Bud leaned forward, staring, his brows drawn together,
breathing the short, quick breaths of emotion focussed upon one
object, excluding all else. Once, when Frank moved his body a
little in the next seat, Bud's hand went out that way
involuntarily. The touch of Frank's rough coat sleeve recalled
him brutally, so that he drew away with a wincing movement as
though he bad been hurt.

All those months in the desert; all those months of the slow
journeying northward; all the fought battles with memory, when he
thought that he had won--all gone for nothing, their slow
anodyne serving but to sharpen now the bite of merciless
remembering. His hand shook upon his knee. Small beads of
moisture oozed out upon his forehead. He sat stunned before the
amazing revelation of how little time and distance had done to
heal his hurt.

He wanted Marie. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted her
in the old days, with a tenderness, an impulse to shield her from
her own weaknesses, her own mistakes. Then--in those old days
--there had been the glamor of mystery that is called romance.
That was gone, worn away by the close intimacies of matrimony. He
knew her faults, he knew how she looked when she was angry and
petulant. He knew how little the real Marie resembled the
speciously amiable, altogether attractive Marie who faced a
smiling world when she went pleasuring. He knew, but--he
wanted her just the same. He wanted to tell her so many things
about the burros, and about the desert--things that would make
her laugh, and things that would make her blink back the tears.
He was homesick for her as he had never been homesick in his life