"She talked a good deal, showing me this and that. Her slangy speech had a certain piquancy, because she looked finer than her words. She was {111} absolutely sure of herself, and at ease. I made out that this was because she was conscious of no standards save those of money, and there, as she would have said, she could 'deliver the goods.' Were n't the evidences of her worth right under my eyes?
"I talked, too, as effusively as I knew how. I tried to meet her halfway. She was evidently a perfectly well-placed and admired person in her own world. I was excited and tired and lonely. It seemed good just to speak to some one.
"Presently the room was cleared, and we began to think of sleeping. I have n't forgotten a word of the conversation that followed.
"'It's very good of you to take me in. I hope I shan't disturb you very much,' I said.
"'Oh, I'm glad to have somebody to talk to. I think this living in Reno {112} is deadly, but it seems to be the easiest way to get results,' she answered. 'How long you been here?'
"I told her.
"'Well, I'm a good deal nearer my freedom than you are. Don't it seem perfectly ridiculous that when you want to shake a man you can't just shake him, without all this to-do?' she said. 'It makes me so mad to think I've got to stay down here six months by myself, just to get rid of Jim Marshall! Say, what does your husband do?'
"What could I say, Uncle Ben? It seemed sacrilegious to mention Arnold in that room, but I was her guest and dependent upon her for shelter and a bed.
"'He is a doctor,' I said.
"'That so? Jim's superintendent of a mine. Up in the mountains. It's {113} the lonesomest place you ever saw. Twenty miles from nowhere, with just a little track running down to the rail road, and nothing worth mentioning when you get there.