"I knew it," cried Eveley ecstatically. "Nolan and I both said so. Spontaneous combustion, that is what it was. Come and sleep with me again to-night. It is such fun to go to bed and turn out the light and talk. Did you ever do it?" "No, my life has not been of that kind." "But you will learn. I never saw any one learn as quickly as you do,--especially things about men.--Now I shall begin by telling you how adorable Nolan is, and you must interrupt me to say how wonderful Jimmy is.--Did you ever have a sweetheart, Marie?" Then she added quickly: "Wait, wait. I--I did not mean to ask questions,--Excuse me, I am sorry. Let's talk of something else." "No, let's talk of lovers," said Marie, snuggling close to Eveley, her head lying against her shoulder. "I have never had the regular kind of a lover,--your kind,--the kind that women want. My life was full of war and horrors, and I had not time for the thrills of love. And the men I knew were not the men that one would wish to love one." "Then, this is your chance," said Eveley happily. "Now I am positively sure that one of these days you will be a matchless American woman. You are just ripe and ready for love. You can't escape it, you sweet thing, even if you could wish. War and horrors were left behind in your old home. Here in your new home you will know only peace and contentment and love. Aren't you glad I adopted you? We must give Mr. Hiltze credit for that anyhow, mustn't we?" There was a sudden tension in the slender figure at her side. "Eveley, are you so innocent? Do you never attribute evil motives to any one? Do you always believe only good and beautiful and lovely things of those you meet?" "Well, I have no real reason for thinking mean or ugly things of any one--not really. I never had any horrors in my life until the war came. I have just lived along serenely and contentedly, and being fairly nice and kind, I have no guilty conscience to trouble me, and no one has ever been hateful or mean to me--not in anything that really counted." Both were silent a moment, thinking, each in her different way, of the contrast in their lives. Then Eveley went on, more slowly: "I feel sometimes that we are living on the crest of a terrible upheaval--that we are on the edge of a seething volcano which is threatening and rumbling beneath us, each day growing fiercer and more ominous, and that presently may come chaos, and we on the crater of life will be dragged down into the furnace with the rest. I suppose," she added apologetically, "it is because of the conditions that always follow a war, the political unrest, the social chaos, the anarchistic tendencies of every one. I am not in the midst of things enough to understand them, but even up here on the top of our canyon, we sometimes get a blast of the hot air from below, and it troubles us. Then we try to forget, and go on with our playing. But the volcano still rumbles beneath."