ordeal for him to stand along and realize that he was only a man
facing eternity. But that was what gave him strength to endure.
Somehow he was a part of it all, some atom in that vastness,
somehow necessary to an inscrutable purpose, something
indestructible in that desolate world of ruin and death and decay,
something perishable and changeable and growing under all the
fixity of heaven. In that endless, silent hall of desert there
was a spirit; and Cameron felt hovering near him what he imagined
to be phantoms of peace.

He returned to camp and sought his comrade.

"I reckon we're two of a kind," he said. "It was a woman who drove
me into the desert. But I come to remember. The desert's the only
place I can do that."

"Was she your wife?" asked the elder man.

"No."

A long silence ensued. A cool wind blew up the canyon, sifting the
sand through the dry sage, driving away the last of the lingering
heat. The campfire wore down to a ruddy ashen heap.

"I had a daughter," said Cameron's comrade. "She lost her mother
at birth. And I--I didn't know how to bring up a girl. She was
pretty and gay. It was the--the old story."

His words were peculiarly significant to Cameron. They distressed
him. He had been wrapped up in his remorse. If ever in the past