Miss Cameron laid her armful of flowers beside him. As she dropped the red and yellow sheaf, Stephen noticed the delicate modeling of her wrist, and smiled appreciatively. “When you are better, my father will see you,” continued the girl. “He will reward you, and—” With her usual quick intuition she noticed the shade of annoyance on his face. “That is,” she went on rather slowly, “he will do what he can for you.” “Thank you,” said Loring, “but I think that in two or three weeks I shall be able to work again.” “I am afraid if I let you talk any more, you won’t ever be able to work,” interrupted the doctor. “I will come again to-morrow,” said Jean. “If there is anything that you want, you must let us send it to you. Good-bye, and thank you!” Her voice as she spoke had the quality of sympathy. He watched her for a moment as she stopped by the other cots, inquiring in pretty broken Spanish for the welfare of the occupants. “Hang it,” he thought, “I wish she would not look at that Mexican in just the way that she looked at me!” With his eyes he followed her as long as he could, then when the tents shut her from view, he closed his eyes and imagined that she was still near. He picked up the flowers and buried his face in them. Their sweetness brought up a wave of memories of the past, of things that he had thrown away. He bit his lip hard and under his breath swore bitterly at himself. Then the fragrance of the flowers soothed him, and he lay back on his pillow thinking of the girl who had brought them. She seemed so strange a figure in the life of Quentin, so aloof, so unrelated! He could not adjust her to her setting. At last it occurred to him that it was not necessary for him to adjust her—in fact that she and her setting were none of his business. Then tired, with the flowers still crushed in his hand, he fell asleep to the accompaniment of the monotonous pound of the smelter. He dreamed of days gone by, yet through it all, vaguely, intangibly, there drifted a girl, the tenderness of whose eyes was blended with the impersonality of pity. As they walked together across the camp, Miss Cameron remarked to the doctor: “It is strange how the rough life here seems to train men. He seemed to be almost a gentleman.” Doctor Kline smiled in an amused fashion. “There’s a lot here, Miss Cameron, who seem ‘almost a gentleman,’ and they are not the best kind, either. In fact they come pretty near to being the worst. Arizona is not the graveyard of reputations. It’s the hell that comes after that. Men drift here from every corner of the world, and from every sort of life. The undercurrent here is full of derelicts. Nobody questions about the past or the future here. They just drift, and it is not so very long before most of them sink.”