"Tell me about Bruce," she said. "He brought you here, he educated you; he must have been very kind to you. He must be unusual,"—looking at the other girl to detect, if she could, any misgiving sign.
Nora stared straight ahead.
"He's been good to me," she said slowly. "He's good to everybody, as I guess you know. The' ain't much to know about him. His name ain't Bayard; nobody knows what it is. He was picked up out of a railroad wreck a long time ago an' old Tim Bayard took him an' raised him. They never got track of his folks; th' wreck burnt.
"Tim died four years ago an' Bruce's runnin' th' outfit. He's got a fine ranch!"—voice rising in unconscious enthusiasm. "He ain't rich, but he'll be well fixed some day. He don't care much about gettin' rich; says it takes too much time. He'd rather read an' fuss with horses an' things."
"Isn't it unusual to find a man out here or anywhere who feels like that? Are there more like him in this country, Nora?"
"God, no!"—with a roughness that startled her companion. "None of 'em are like him. He was born different; you can tell that by lookin' at him. He ain't their kind, but they all like him, you bet! He's smarter'n they are. Feller from th' East, a perfesser, come out here with th' consumption once when Tim was alive an' stayed there; he taught Bruce lots. My!"—with a sigh of mingled pride and hopelessness—"he sure knows a lot. Just as if he was raised an' educated in th' East, only with none of th' frills you folks get."
Then she was silent and refused to respond readily to Ann's advances, but rode looking at her pony's ears, her lips in a straight line.
That was the beginning. Each day the two women rode together, Nora teaching Ann all she knew of horses and showing her, in her own way, the mighty beauty of that country.
After the first time, they said little about Bruce; with a better acquaintance, more matters could be talked about and for that each was thankful.
Removed as they were from one another by birth and training, each of these two women, strangers until within a few days, found that a great part of her life was identical with that of the other. Yet, at the very point where they came closest to one another, divergence began again. Their common interest was their feeling for Bruce Bayard, and their greatest difference was the manner in which each reacted to the emotion. The waitress, more elemental, more direct and child-like, wanted the man with an unequivocal desire. She would have gone through any ordeal, subjected herself to any ignominious circumstances, for his pleasure. But she did not want him as a possession, as something which belonged to her; she wanted him for a master, longed with every fiber of her sensory system to belong to him. She would have slaved for him, drudged for him, received any brutal outburst he might have turned on her, gratefully, just so long as she knew she was his.