while to play the patroness to a group of young poets and painters of
advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortune and lives her
own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden.

As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his
naturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though it
often made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of the
strongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion the
great country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith in it
and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its development.
He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises in Wyoming or
Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkable things in
mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can once get Jim
Burden's attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes off into the
wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then the money which
means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able to lose himself in
those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now, he meets new people
and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by which his boyhood friends
remember him. He never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and
sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those of a young man, and his
sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is Western
and American.

During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning
to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known long ago and whom
both of us admired. More than any other person we remembered, this girl
seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of
our childhood. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and
places, to set a quiet drama going in one's brain. I had lost sight of her
altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a