"Oh, Bill, please don't start that! You're gone half the time, almost--running around the country playing you're doing important things. What would I do in a great big house with nobody around but servants? I'd go crazy, that's all. And then, if we wanted to go somewhere, like New York or Europe, there would be the house to worry about. As it is, all we have to do is pack our trunks--and we can hire professional packers to do that. We have every comfort we could possibly have at home, and a lot besides. And I can see people, Bill, without giving a dinner or a card party or something. I'm going to have an at-home day--lots of permanent guests here do. And if I want to entertain, look at the advantages. "Besides," she added artfully, "you know you couldn't keep in touch with men half so easily if you were struck off in a big house on Nob Hill or somewhere." Bill did not answer for a minute. He was apparently quite absorbed with the baby's hands; he had never seen such tiny, soft hands before. "I wouldn't run around so much, honey, if I had a home," he said quietly, looking up at Doris. "Oh, fudge! Men with homes are gone _more_. You can't fool me! I've heard the women talk who have homes. Their husbands are always gone somewhere, their servants are always stealing them blind or quitting, and the house is a white elephant. Besides, I don't know where I'd like to live permanently. I can't picture myself settling down in any one town--can you, Bill? Now be honest." "Yes. Parowan." Well, she had wanted him honest, and she got the truth. Nor did she relish it, judging from the look on her face. "Parowan! Of all the places in the world----" "It's where we got the money to spend here," Bill stated stubbornly. "I've had some mighty happy times there, even if I did eat bacon and beans and hike a hundred miles after them sometimes. It made our stake for us--that same Parowan. Only for that mountain, you'd still be hazing your dad's cattle away from the _loco_ patches, maybe, and helping your mother with the dishes. I don't wish you were--I'm tickled to death that you can wear diamonds and hire a nigger to comb your hair for you. But just the same, Doris, let's not get our heads so high in the air we can't see what Parowan ought to mean to us. "This baby's mine--and yours. We've got her, and we haven't got a roof for her to sleep under, except what we hire by the week. Only for Parowan, we couldn't have married at all; don't forget that. You wouldn't have married a poor prospector, and if you would, I wouldn't have let you. It was the gold I found on that mountain side that made it possible for me to ask you to marry me. And it was the gold that made you say yes." He swallowed as if there were some obstruction in his throat and went on, staring straight before him,--seeing that cut in the gulch's side, perhaps, and the slim girl in the stained khaki riding skirt and cotton shirt waist staring at the vein of yellow-flecked rock.