"Not much. Never had time to form the habit. But I've read Shakespeare--at least I've read Julius Cæsar six times," he explained. "I had it in the desert once where there wasn't a newspaper for two months. And I've read the Kings, too--most of 'em." "But not Hamlet?" She was smiling as she looked from him into the street. He shook his head with a laugh. "Too much meandering in that. I don't like talk unless it is straight." Though he was upon the most distant terms of acquaintance with the English language, it occurred to her that he probably possessed a knowledge of men and things which no university training could have given him. "It is wonderful," she remarked, touched to sympathy by his confession, "that you should have succeeded." "Oh, any man could have done it--any man, that is, who loved a fight as much as I do. It was half luck and half bulldog grip, I suppose. When I once get my grip on a thing, I'll hold on no matter what happens. There ain't the power this side of Kingdom Come that could make me let go if I don't want to." She thought of his wife, of his losing fight against the craving for morphine, and she replied very gently: "If you hadn't been a good fighter, I suppose you would have been beaten long ago." "So long ago," he retorted with jovial humour, "that you wouldn't have known me." An impulse of curiosity urged her to an utterly irrelevant response. "I wonder if you have known many women?" She felt that she should like to hear his story from him, there in the deserted yard; but when he answered her, he revealed a personal reticence worthy of the aristocratic traditions of Mrs. Carr. "Oh, I haven't had time for them," he replied indifferently. "Perhaps there aren't so many in Bonanza City?" "Oh, there're plenty," he rejoined gaily, "if you take the trouble to look for them." "And you didn't?" They had entered the house, and she spoke merrily as she crossed to the staircase. "Well, the sort I found didn't take my fancy, you see!" he tossed back playfully from his door. Her foot was on the lowest step, when, hesitating with a birdlike movement, she looked at him over her right shoulder. "Well, that's a pity. A woman could have told you a good many things," she observed. "For instance?" He was still jesting. Poised for flight, she gazed back at him, challenging his eyes. "Oh, not to collect gold-headed walking-sticks, not to believe in golden-oak, and not to be so extravagantly--slangy." As she ran up the staircase, a burst of laughter followed her in the midst of which she distinguished the retort: "Well, I own to the slang, but I inherited the oak, and the sticks were all given me--by women."