As often as her memory had assailed him he had longed to rehearse that scene; the conversation, desultory and personal; her white profile against the flaming blue sky; the intensity and brilliancy of her eyes, so unlooked for in her young almost colorless face; her pink mouth that changed its expression so often; her curious magnetism, so unlike that of the full-blooded woman--all of that and something more; the strange community of mind--or soul?--that had drawn him on to pour out his secret self into another self of whose contact he was almost literally sensible,--in a sudden desire for comprehension that had been like the birth of a new star in his mental constellation. He had felt the thrill of her sympathy, her understanding, then another thrill of perplexity, fear; then the little quarrel, when he had thought her more adorable than ever, and no longer bearing the least resemblance to a star-wraith, but wholly feminine. When he left her it was with the confused sense that he had sojourned for a bit with the quintessence of womanhood whom Nature had cast in a new and perilous mould. He went over the hour again and again, hoping to bore himself, to arrive at the conclusion that it had been a mere commonplace flirtation with a coquette who was as cold as she looked. But he found the recaptured scene very sweet. The power of concentration he possessed enabled him to shut out the little room and sit at the feet of the woman whose magic personality had penetrated the barriers he so jealously had built about his soul and given him the first sense of companionship he had ever known. He was filled with a longing that shook him and hurt him, to feel that sense of sympathetic companionship, of spiritual contact, again. And far more. He knew that she had loved no man, that all the glory and the riches within her were waiting--and if she had waited, and he had waited, and they had met unfettered that night---- He sprang to his feet. His face in the smoky light looked black. “God!” he muttered. “God! Have I fallen as low as that? If ever I think of her again I’ll cut my heart out. I hope to God the Amalgamated puts up the hell of a fight. What I want is a man’s work in the world, not a play actor’s.” XXIV A week later, Gregory, who was down in the bottom of the shaft, received a message by way of a descending miner that a gentleman from Butte, one Mr. John Robinson, requested the favour of an interview, and awaited him in the cabin on the top of the hill. At least such is the polite translation of the message as delivered: “Say, Boss, there’s a guy upstairs in your shack what says he’s from Butte, and’s come out to have a chin with you--some important. Says his name is John Robinson.”