he covered only one side of the paper, she noticed, thinking with a smile
of her own small economies. Presently he got up, swept the papers together
in his hands, and stooped over them. He is numbering and folding them,
she thought, and now he is directing the envelope,--to whom, I wonder!
He turned, and as he walked towards the window she saw him put something
into the pocket of his coat. He lighted a cigar, and began walking, with
long strides, up and down the room, one hand in his pocket; the other
he occasionally rubbed over his eyes and head, as if they hurt him. She
remembered that the engineer had headaches, and wished that somebody would
ask him to try valerian. Is he ever really lonely? she thought. What can
he, what can any man, know of loneliness? He may go out and walk about on
the hills; he may go away altogether, and take the risks of life somewhere
else. A woman must take no risks. There is not a house in the camp where
he might not enter to-night, if he chose; he might come over here and
talk to me. The East, with all its cherished memories and prejudices and
associations, seemed so hopelessly far away; they two alone, in that
strange, uncongenial new world which had crowded out the old, seemed to
speak a common language: and yet how little she really knew of him!

Suddenly the lights disappeared from the windows of the office. She heard
a door unlock, and presently the young man's figure crossed the street and
turned up the trail past the house.

Two other figures going up halted, and the taller one said, "Will you go up
on the hill, to-night, Arnold?"

"What for?" said Arnold, slackening his pace without stopping.

"Oh, nothing in particular,--to see the senoritas."