"The agony of it!" His hands were clasping and unclasping behind his back, almost as were his sister's on the other trail. "And ordinarily there is no way out. Divorce doesn't settle it. The most righteous divorce laws cannot supplant conscience—and conscience speaks only in the one Book of all the world.... But this isn't becoming to such a night," he broke in, with sudden eagerness. "Look at that sunset. Only in the West do you find that unbroken spectacle, such clearness of air, such a wonderful sweep of colour. What is it about the Western air that makes a man——"
He paused abruptly, breathing heavily. She looked at him in quick fear.
"—that makes a man feel ten years younger," he went on, with an absurd change of tone. "I think I could grow frisky out here."
Across her face passed a grateful smile of relief and understanding that she did not know she made so plain.
"It's the essence of the West. It makes or mars a man. It does the same, only more swiftly, with the consumptives they send to us from the East. Some it cures—some it kills.... Some it kills when it seems most certainly to be curing them.... That's the West; it does that with everyone—one never knows."
He broke in on her dreamy reflections in a lighter vein:
"Just the same it's the young man's country, don't you think?"
"It's a great blessing—or a great curse.... What was Jim before he came here?"
It startled him; he had no reply ready.
"I fear Jim and I do not fulfil your estimate of the foundation for a happy married life. I never knew his past—I don't now. I never knew his people—he never speaks of them. I took Jim—for himself—a handsome, manly, honest, good-natured——"