He spoke more freely of the struggle outside in order to make her feel her own sweet security--here where the grime of trade and the reek of politics never came. At last he rose to go, smiling a little as if in apology for his dark mood. He looked down at her slender body robed so daintily in gray and white; she made him feel coarse and rough. Her eyes appealed to him, her glance was like a detaining hand. He felt it, and yet he said abruptly: "Good night." "You'll come to see me again!" "Yes," he answered very simply and gravely. And she, looking after him as he went down the street with head bent in thought, grew weak with a terrible weakness, a sort of hunger, and deep in her heart she cried out: "Oh, the brave, splendid life _he_ leads out there in the world! Oh, the big, brave world!" She clinched her pink hand. "Oh, this terrible, humdrum woman's life! It kills me, it smothers me. I must do something. I must be something. I can't live here in this way--useless. I must get into the world." And looking around the cushioned, glowing, beautiful room, she thought bitterly: "This is being a woman. O God, I want to be free of four walls! I want to struggle like that." And then she sat down before the fire and whispered very softly, "I want to fight in the world--with him." III. A FAIR EXILE. The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads the dust arose in long lines like smoke from some hidden burning which the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews, the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight. The freight cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and heaved up laterally, till they resembled a long line of awkward, frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families. A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing him several times, said in a friendly way: "Going up to Boomtown, I imagine." "Yes--if we ever get there." "Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got an empty car or two to throw in at the junction." "Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient because I've got a case coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it." "Your name is Allen, I believe." "Yes, J. H. Allen, of Sioux City." "I thought so. I've heard you speak." The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather somber in appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's voice. "When do you reach the junction?" "Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends there?"