“I’m not sure. Perhaps if you watch him awhile you can tell.... I’ll get some supper and call you.”
* * * * *
Adam’s habitual dexterity over camp tasks failed him this evening. Presently, however, the supper was ready, and he threw brush on the fire to make a light.
“Mrs. Virey,” he called at the door, “come and eat now.”
When had the camp fire of his greeted such a vision, except in his vague dreams? Tall, white-gowned, slender, and graceful, with the poise of a woman aloof and proud and the sad face of a Madonna—what a woman to sit at Adam’s camp fire in Death Valley! The shadowed and thick light hid the ravages that had by day impaired her beauty. Adam placed a canvas pack for her to sit upon, and then he served her, with something that was not wholly unconscious satisfaction. Of all men, he of the desert could tell the signs of hunger; and the impression had come to him that she was half starved. The way she ate brought home to Adam with a pang the memorable days when he was starving. This woman sitting in the warm, enhancing glow of the camp fire had an exquisitely spiritual face. She had seemed all spirit. But self-preservation was the first instinct and the first law of human nature, or any nature.
“When have I eaten so heartily!” she exclaimed at last. “But, oh! it all tasted so good.... Sir, you are a capital cook.”
“Thank you,” replied Adam, much gratified.
“Do you always fare so well?”
“No. I’m bound to confess I somewhat outdid myself to-night. You see, I seldom have such opportunity to serve a woman.”
She rested her elbows on her knees, with her hands under her chin, and looked at him with intense interest. In the night her eyes seemed very full and large, supernaturally bright and tragic. They were the eyes of a woman who still preserved in her something of inherent faith in mankind. Adam divined that she had scarcely looked at him before as an individual with a personality, and that some accent or word of his had struck her singularly.