The spring was located some two hundred yards or more from the shack and just out of line of the rock-strewn slope. Spreading like a fan, this weathered slant of stones extended its long, curved length in the opposite direction. Adam decided to pitch his permanent camp, or at least sleeping place, here on the grass. Here he erected a brush-and-canvas shelter to make shade, and deposited his effects under it. That done, he returned to the shack to cook breakfast. There appeared to be no life in the rude little misshapen hut. Had the man who built it ever been a boy? There were men so utterly helpless and useless out in the wilds, where existence depended upon labor of hands, that they seemed foreign to the descendants of Americans. Adam could not but wonder about the man lying in there, though he tried hard to confine his reflections to the woman. He did not like the situation. Of what avail the strong arm, the desert-taught fierceness to survive? If this man and woman had ever possessed instincts to live, to fight, to reproduce their kind, to be of use in the world, they had subverted them to the debasements of sophisticated and selfish existence. The woman loomed big to Adam, and he believed she had been dragged down by a weak and vicious man. Leisurely Adam attended to the preparation of breakfast, prolonging tasks that always passed swiftly through his hands. “Good morning, Sir Wansfell,” called a voice with something of mockery in it, yet rich and wistful--a low-pitched contralto voice full of music and pathos and a pervading bitterness. It stirred Adam’s blood, so sluggish this morning. It seemed to carry an echo from his distant past. Turning, he saw the woman, clad in gray, with a girdle of cord twisted around her slender waist. Soft and clean and fleecy, that gray garment, so out of place there, so utterly incongruous against the background of crude shack and wild slope, somehow fitted her voice as it did her fragile shape, somehow set her infinitely apart from the women Adam had met in his desert wanderings. She came from the great world outside, a delicate spark from the solid flint of class, a thoroughbred whom years before the desert might have saved. “Good morning, Mrs. Virey,” returned Adam. “How are you--and did your husband awake?” “I slept better than for long,” she replied, “and I think I know why.... Yes, Virey came to. He’s conscious, and asked for water. But he’s weak--strange. I’d like you to look at him presently.” “Yes, I will.” “And how are you after your tremendous exertions of yesterday?” she inquired. “Not so spry,” said Adam, with a smile. “But I’ll be myself in a day or so. I believe the air down in the valley affected me a little. My lungs are sore.... I think it would be more comfortable for you if we had breakfast in your kitchen. The sun is hot.” “Indeed yes. So you mean to--to do this--this camp work for me--in spite of----”