Sommers rose in his stirrups and gazed about him over the rotting buildings of the play-city, the scrawny acres that ended in the hard black line of the lake, the vast blocks of open land to the south, which would go to make some new subdivision of the sprawling city. Absorbed, charmed, grimly content with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep of defaced earth. The horse started: a human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, her face thrust into the air. Sommers reined in his horse and jumped down. "How is your husband?" he asked brusquely. Mrs. Preston looked up with a smile of glad recognition, but she did not answer immediately. "You remember, don't you?" the doctor said kindly. "You are Mrs. Preston, aren't you? I am the doctor who operated on your husband a few weeks ago at the hospital." "Yes, I remember," she replied, almost sullenly. "How is he? I left St. Isidore's the next day. Is he still in the hospital?" "They discharged him last Monday," Mrs. Preston answered, in the same dull tone. "Ah!" The doctor jerked the bridle which he held in his left hand and prepared to mount. "So he made a quick recovery." "No, no! I didn't say that," she replied passionately. "You knew, you knew _that_ couldn't be. He has--he is--I don't know how to say it." Sommers slipped the bridle-rein over the horse's head and walked on by her side. She looked down at the roadway, as if to hide her burning face. "Where is he now?" the doctor asked, finally, more gently.