smoking-car were luxury, comfort, and companionship. Behind drawn
shades were the whir of electric fans, an ebon-faced porter in snowy
linen, the clink of ice in long, misted glasses, the cool fragrance
of crushed mint. Even the fat man in shirt-sleeves reading the Denver
_Times_, alternately drawing upon his fat cigar and sipping the glass
of beer at his elbow, was not distressing to look upon. The four men
busy over their daily game of solo might have been at ease in their
own club.

At one end of the long car two young men dawdled in languid comfort,
their bodies sprawling loosely in two big, soft arm-chairs, a tray
with a couple of half-emptied high-ball glasses upon the table between
them. They had created an atmosphere of their own about them, an
atmosphere constituted of the blue haze from cigarettes mingled with
trivial talk. The immensity outside might have bored them, so their
shade was drawn low. For a moment one of the two men lifted a corner
of it. He peered out, only to drop it with a disgusted sigh and return
to his high-ball.

He was slender, young, pale-eyed, pale-haired, white-handed,
anemic-looking. He was patently of the sort which considers such a
thing as carelessness in the matter of a crease in one's trousers a
crime of crimes. His tie, adjusted with a precision which was a
science, was of a pale lavender. His socks were silk and of the same
color. His eyes were as near a pale lavender as they were near any
color.

"The devilish stupid sameness of this country gets on a man's nerves."
He put his disgust into drawling words. "Suppose it's like this all
the way to 'Frisco?"