What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous. “We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert.” He waved out at a hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her soul for wandering in limitless spaces. “Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! And for me, returning to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory.” Grant looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes. “Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--” The girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert’s shortcomings. “You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. “You have never seen the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with spring fairies. Water!”--a crescendo gust of laughter--“You think water only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then you would come to see a real beauty in water.” “You know something of the desert,” Grant conceded. “Something! Señor”--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of devotion--“señor, my home is there and my father’s home has been there more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore. Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home.” “But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant eagerly caught her up. “That’s on the Line, isn’t it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity would not down: “Then you are Mexican?” An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally could not know much about its social distinctions.