"Can we really be on the same planet?" asked Gwendolen; "or in the night, did this little measuring-worm of a train reach up and pull itself to Mars?" Before, behind, everywhere, stretched spaces of exhausted gray sand, rising now and again into nerveless hills. For vegetation were set innumerable rosettes of the spiked yucca, with small heaps of the prickly pear, a cactus bush built up of fleshy bulbs, leaf out of leaf, like inflated green coral. On some of the thorny ridges perched star-like, yellow blooms. On others were stuck thick, purple fingers, known politely by the name of "figs." Dodge remarked sententiously that it was a very interesting plant; though, by raisers of cattle, not considered desirable. "Stock won't eat it a little bit," he explained cherubically. "Get stickers into their noses." "Do you call that thing a plant?" cried Gwendolen, pointing. "It may grow, but it is no more a plant than a canary is a crab." Dodge smiled again, the irritating smile of the well-informed. "Wait till to-morrow in Arizona, if you want to know how it feels to be struck dumb." Gwendolen tossed her head. Her tendency during these initial days was to overact indifference. "I rather think I shall not undergo the humiliation of incapacity to speak! Life heretofore has brought no crises in which I could not command a fairly adequate linguistic expression of my visual experiences." "Whew,--how did you remember it all?" said Dodge under his breath. Yuki turned her intense face from the window. At sight of the absorbed, half-dazed expression, Gwendolen gave a little laugh, crying, "Here is one already nearing the borders of silence! That is Yuki's way. When she begins to feel things, she draws back in her shell, and puts sealing-wax on the door. What is it now, Yuki,--lack of English,--that keeps you so dumb?" "No, not exacterlee," said Yuki, flushing a little at the turning of all eyes. "I have not good English, of course; but I could not say to myself all that I see, even in Nipponese. When too many new thing come, it is like fat people trying to squeeze together through a door,--all get mashed, and none come through." Dodge gazed at the speaker in quizzical admiration. "Miss Onda, I long for a phonograph record. That is a masterly exposition of a profound psychological truth!" Yuki cast a laughing, half-pathetic glance toward Pierre. "Is it very bad names that he is calling me, M. Le Beau?"