She stumbled after him in the dark and let him untie the horse and help her up to the saddle. They cantered most of the way home; as they swung through the narrow streets at the edge of town she peered through the windows, catching quick flashes of lit rooms with quiet women sewing, or standing at stoves, or washing dishes. Suddenly she felt desolate and lonely, envious of these people who had homes and dull quiet duties. Tom waved her in to the living-room while he led the horses to the corral. “You wait there and think about life.” She sat on his camp cot and reflected. It was a big bare room, with a bearskin and a beaded vest on the wall for decoration. There was a table with a Victrola and several bottles, and on the window-sill there were stacks of the little fifteen-cent magazines with pictures on them of bucking broncos and cheering cowboys in furry chaps. The last of the West was here, in these dude-wranglers with their tall stories and their horses. Now she was sad with a tender melancholy, and somewhat sleepy. What were they all looking for here in the mountains? Why did they come? She shook her head. “Now,” said Tom in the doorway. “What’s it all about?” He handed her a glass. “You ought to feel better with this,” he said. He sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her. “What’s eating you?” he asked gently. “Tell me about it and you’ll feel better.” Her face buried in his shoulder, she answered, “Nothing. I feel sleepy. I’m all right.” “Sure nothing’s the matter?” Again she shook her head. “Well,” he said, “I think there is. You don’t come around as much as you used to. You’ve been running around with that funny crowd, the queer ones.” “Why, Tom!” With exaggerated indignation, she sat erect and stared at him. “Sure you are. I saw you at the show the other night with Madden.” “He’s not queer,” she protested. “He ain’t? Then I don’t know anything about queer ones. Take your medicine there.” An hour or so passed in jerks; quick lovely spaces of time with the Victrola playing and short horrible periods that dragged on for years, when she relapsed into stupidity and stared at the beaded vest and tried not to talk about life. She saw Tom once in a while, as it were, looking at her and grinning in a monotonous way: she leaned against his shoulder in an unpleasant spell of dizziness, and it was there that Flo found her when she came stamping in with Wally. She heard Flo’s sharp voice. “Look at that! Did you ever? We’d better get a taxi.” And in the car that crept through the dark streets she sat up suddenly and said, “Well, I seem to have done it instead of you.” “You did,” said Flo. “Lie down.” “I’m all right.” She sat up and tried to put off her remorse until next morning. “Where are the boys?” “I made them stay at the stable. It’s too late for them to come out.” “What time is it?” “Three o’clock, I think.”