"striking effect" of fire and sunset and rolling smoke and tall pines
seen dimly in the background.

Jack wanted to climb up there and shake her out of her frivolity.
Which was strange when you consider that all his life, until three
months ago, he had lived in the midst of just such unthinking
flippancy, had been a part of it and had considered--as much as he
ever considered anything--that it was the only life worth living.

He went around the little rock pinnacle and stood looking somberly
down at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greater
beginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub. He was
thinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in the
devastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish bit of play. The girl
irritated him with her chatter--yet three months ago he himself would
have considered it brilliant conversation, and would have exerted
himself to keep pace with her.

"Listen!" she cried suddenly, and Jack turned his head quickly before
he remembered that the word had come to mean nothing more than a
superfluous ejaculation hung, like a bangle on a bracelet, to the
sentences of modern youth. "Listen, it's going to be dark before that
fire burns itself out of the way. How am I going to get home? Which
way would be best to go around it, do you think?"

"No way at all," Jack replied shortly. "You can't go home."

"Why, forevermore! I'll have to go somewhere else, then--to some farm
house where I can phone. Kate would be simply wild if--"