"Heavens, what a cynic you are! I feel like a mere daub of sentiment beside
you. There have been moments, do you know, even in this benighted mining
camp, when I have believed in that hunter and his smile!"

He got up suddenly, and stood against the rock, facing her. Although he
kept his cool, bantering tone, his breathing had quickened, and his eyes
looked darker.

"You may consider me a representative man, if you please: I speak for
hundreds of us scattered about in mining camps and on cattle ranches, in
lighthouses and frontier farms and military posts, and all the Godforsaken
holes you can conceive of, where men are trying to earn a living, or lose
one,--we are all going to the dogs for the want of that smile! What is to
become of us if the women whose smiles we care for cannot support life in
the places where we have to live? Come, Miss Frances, can't you make that
smile last at least two years?" He gathered a handful of dry leaves from a
broken branch above his head and crushed them in his long hands, sifting
the yellow dust upon the water below.

"The places you speak of are very different," the girl answered, with
a shade of uneasiness in her manner. "A mining camp is anything but a
solitude, and a military post may be very gay."

"Oh, the principle is the same. It is the absolute giving up of everything.
You know most women require a background of family and friends and
congenial surroundings; the question is whether _any_ woman can do without
them."

The young girl moved in a constrained way, and flushed as she said, "It
must always be an experiment, I suppose, and its success would depend, as I