conversation, and he, searching for a polite commonplace, said
presently:

"Have you ever been in Colina before?"

"Often, but not in the last two years," she answered tonelessly, "not
since you've been here, I guess. I hate the mountains."

"I have been here nearly two years," he vouchsafed, "and I feel as if I
would never go away. But you live in the desert, don't you?"

"Sometimes, that is, when I'm not out on the road. The desert is the
place. You can breathe there, you can live there," there was a
passionate vibration in her voice, "but these old, cold mountains make
you feel all the time as if they were going to fall on you and crush
you."

"Do they make you feel that way?" He pulled his chair nearer to her so
that his back was turned to the two men, and José, who saw everything,
smiled faintly, mordaciously. "How strange!" It was not a conventional
expression, he seemed really to find it strange, unbelievably so.

"And you, how do they make you feel?" she asked wearily, a touch of
scorn in her glance.

A light seemed to glow over his face. "Ah, I do not know that I can tell
you," he said, and she was conscious of some immediate change in him,
which she apprehended but could never have defined. It was as if he had
withdrawn mentally to incalculable distances.