"Widder?"
"No."
"Never hitched up yet?"
He shook his head.
"Never goin' to, I s'pose."
"Oh, I don't know," he laughed, and turned his head over his shoulder to the curious scene between them and the bar. It was suddenly as if he had never seen it before; then, while Maudie waited, a little scornful, a little kind, his eyes went through the window to the pink and orange sunrise. As some change came over the Colonel's face, "She died!" said Maudie.
"No—no—she didn't die;" then half to himself, half to forestall Maudie's crude probing, "but I lost her," he finished.
"Oh, you lost her!"
He stood, looking past the ugliness within to the morning majesty without. But it was not either that he saw. Maudie studied him.
"Guess you ain't give up expectin' to find her some day?"