with parted white hair and eyes that flame in deep sockets when she talks of Indian wrongs. I called her a prophetess -I think she is like a figure in Greek tragedy. If I ever write a symbolic play of New Mexico she will be the leader of the chorus. The Indians of Santa Clara, where her daughter was so long a teacher, flock to consult her ancient wisdom "every Sunday of the world," as she said. I could myself listen spellbound for a year.

She suggested to Nan Mitchell and me a plan to ride up Santa Clara Cañon and over the divide into the Zuñi coun

try, with Gertrude's and my ancient friend, Santiago, for guide. We have been consulting the old chief about it this morning. He and his pueblo again wove the same spell of incantation over our spirits that made us captive last year; it is a sort of pastoral spell. For the village spreads out at the edges into wattled corrals huddled full of goats and sheep, and beyond that again into green fields that look down on the Rio Grande. No single big plaza here; the one-story houses are built about a series of tiny barren squares always full of women baking in the beehive ovens, or burning in smoldering fires the black pottery for which Santa Clara is famous. A silent little church faces the whole purple length of the Sangre de Cristo.

As for Santiago, not even the beaver skins twisted about the two braids of white hair that frame his twinkling old face have changed. To be sure, he is no longer Governor. His blue room looks a little sad without the two ebony-andsilver canes that are the badges of the

Governor's office-one presented by the Spanish Crown, one by no other than Abraham Lincoln. But there was still a ring of gubernatorial magnificence in Santiago's parting "Adios, amigas."

TESUQUE, July 18th.

Back on the job more dead than alive after an interminable ride home in the thunderous dark. The moon played us false, and we had lingered overlong to enjoy the flowery lanes behind Santa Cruz's seventeenth-century mission church.

This is one of the real treasures of the Southwest, not to say of the United States. Of course one reason we found it so beautiful and moving is that the fine white spaces under the carved vigas, the painted altars and frescoed chapels, the strange, tortured brown Cristos and stranger santos in pink ballet skirts are no curiosity for tourists as are the California missions-indeed, few tourists know of their existence-but the center of an ardent religious life. The æsthete who wanders in will recognize Spanish influence transposed to a primitive region, Spanish traditional art handed on through the brains of priests to naïve native craftsmen. But Salomé and the politicians from the tawny cañons tie their wagons at the gate and walk in, hat in hand, to kneel and pray.

Gertrude leaves in three days! Unbelievable and desperate thought! If we lived in a vortex before, it is a very cyclone of activity that now hurls uswith a train of brown men following after-from kitchen to corral.

SCENE. The waiting-room of a small railway station at a desolate country junction. Night.

The station master, muddy and carrying a lantern, comes in from the darkness outdoors and winds a clock upon the wall; at this there is the sound of an annoyed yawn from the apparently empty benches. A man has been lying at full length on one of the benches, but now he slowly "sits up."

He is "somewhere in the late thirties or early forties," but not yet "wellpreserved." People of sixty would speak of him as "a young man"; people of sixteen would of course think him of an advanced age. He is urban, intelligent - looking - a "man of the world"; very "attractive." His clothes are of an imported texture, pleasant for travel, and he wears a soft hat and a light-weight overcoat. His name is Ames.

The station master, having wound the clock, looks at him.

STATION MASTER (casually). -Been asleep, I expect.

AMES (passing a gloved hand over his eyes). I have not. (He looks at the STATION MASTER drowsily.) You aren't the same one, are you.

[He states this as an interesting discovery; it is not a question.

STATION MASTER.-I'm not the same one what?

AMES. You aren't the same station master that was here this afternoon.

STATION MASTER. - He ain't no station master; he's my brother-in-law. AMES.-Oh!

STATION MASTER. - He jes' spelled me to-day; I was teamin'.

AMES. I thought he seemed to be an

amateur.

STATION MASTER. - How? [He means, "What did you say?" AMES.-He seemed bashful. About giving any information, I mean.

STATION MASTER. - Well, right tonight I ain't much better, myself. The wires are all down after them storms; the bridge at Millersville's washed out on one road and they was a big freight smash on the other one. My brother-inlaw says he told you that much.

AMES. Yes. Healsotold me there was absolutely no food in this neighborhood. STATION MASTER. -He was right. They ain't.

AMES. But my Lord! the people in this neighborhood have to live on something!

STATION MASTER.-Ain't no people in this neighborhood 'cept me and my brother-in-law's fam'lies.

Well, waitin' fer trains does git people kind of pettish with each other. I notice your wife's still a-settin' on that baggage truck out yonder.

AMES. She isn't my wife! STATION MASTER.-Oh! Your lady, I mean. She's still settin' out yonder, I

see.

AMES. She isn't my lady. STATION MASTER. - Well, excuse me. My brother-in-law, he took her and you for married. He told me you and her had kind of a spat, jest before he left here this evenin'. But of course a man's got a right to quarrel with other women 's well's his wife.

AMES (slightly annoyed with himself for being annoyed by this report of the STATION MASTER's brother-in-law).-Theah-lady and I were hardly-ah-quarreling. I never saw her before I got on the train this morning.

STATION MASTER. - Well, that often happens. I've knowed plenty of perfeckly respectable people to do it, too. You might say it's nature.

AMES. What is?

STATION MASTER. - Why, fer strange couples to git to talkin' to each otherand all so on-on a train.

AMES. I didn't speak to this lady on the train. In fact, we didn't speak to each other till we'd been moping about this God-forsaken station for an hour. Then, as there wasn't anything else in the world in sight but mud-and your brother-in-law-and she didn't need to guess very hard to guess I was hungryshe offered to share her lunch basket with me, and we naturally got to talking.

STATION MASTER.-Well, sir, a person can git mighty well acquainted with anybody in about ten hours' talkin'.

AMES (crossly). - We haven't been talking for the last two hours.

STATION MASTER.-Well, sir, I sh'd think she'd be chilly out there by this time, though. Where's she bound fer?

AMES. I think she said a station about thirty or forty miles from hereAmity.

STATION MASTER.-Amity? worse off 'n what you are! AMES.-No; that's impossible!

She's

STATION MASTER. -Amity's on the branch line. Everything's blowed to hell down that way; creeks over the rails and all.

AMES. Isn't there any way of getting a motor car?

STATION MASTER. - Not with the telephone lines down like they are. I don't reckon no car could git through these roads, neither.

AMES (gloomily). -Yes, so your brother-in-law said. (A clicking is heard in the other room.) Isn't that your telegraph instrument?

STATION MASTER. - So 'tis. That means they got the wire up again at Logan's station. Well, now we'll see what's what, mebbe!

[He goes into the other room. AMES goes to the outer door and again speaks to an invisible person upon the station platform.

AMES. I think you'd better come in now, Miss Stuart. (In response, a thrillingly lovely voice is heard, though the words are not discernible. However, what MISS STUART says is, "I'm quite comfortable here, thank you.") I really think you'd better come in. There may be some news of your train-or mine!

[This seems to mean more to MISS STUART than his previous appeal. Her voice is heard again, "Oh!"

She is evidently approaching.

AMES. That's better. Do come in and be sensible.

[Her voice is heard once more before she appears. A faint amusement and protest are audible in it: "Sensible? My dear sir!" He holds the door open for her as she appears and comes down. Then he follows. She is of a lovely and charming presence; one is aware of that instantly, though she is muffled in furs and veil; and one becomes even more aware of it as

she pushes up the veil from her face. MISS STUART.-My dear sir, I think maybe I could be more sensible if the news turns out to be of my train. Could you stand its being about my train instead of yours, Mr. Ames?

AMES (a little stiffly). - If mine came first you'd be relieved of me.

MISS SUART.-Yes; so I should. (She lifts the lid of lunch basket upon a bench.) Oh, you haven't eaten the sandwichnor the egg, either!

AMES.-Certainly not.

MISS STUART (lifting a hard-boiled egg from the basket daintily, in a gloved hand). -Didn't you even nibble it?

AMES. I did not.

MISS STUART. - Are you sure? AMES (indignantly).-I'm not in the habit of "nibbling" things.

MISS STUART. - You're sure? I knew a bishop once who used to steal little bits of icing off of icing cakes. He'd slip out in the kitchen on baking days when no one was looking-and then he'd deny it!

AMES.-I'm not a bishop, please. MISS STUART.-How could I tell? I've only known you (she glances at the clock) ten hours and thirty-some minutes, and this is the first time you've mentioned that you're not a bishop. Why didn't you eat this egg?

AMES. You know perfectly well why I didn't.

MISS STUART. But I thought you would if I left you alone with it. I've left you alone with it on purpose-two hours. I'm afraid you're stubborn.

AMES. More personalities?

MISS STUART. - Well, isn't a question of what one eats necessarily rather personal?

AMES. I think you made it personal when you lost your temper.

MISS STUART.-When I lost my temper? Oh, oh!

AMES. But you did! You lost your temper and declined to sit in the same room with me. Rather than do that you went out in the night air and sat two hours on a baggage truck!

MISS STUART.-Please listen, Mr. Ames- Your name is Ames, isn't it?

AMES. You seemed to have no doubt of it before you lost your

MISS STUART.-Mr. Ames, let's put it this way: I lost your temper. As for me, it seems at least you ought to distinguish between a loss of temper and a sense of injury.

AMES.-Yes, I had the sense of injury. MISS STUART. - When we found there was only one egg and one sandwich left for dinner, and no other food in reach, I said

AMES. It was yours, and you meant you wanted it all, naturally. MISS STUART (indignantly). -Oh! AMES. What I minded was your thinking I expected any of it.

MISS STUART. - When I said there wasn't enough for two I meant I expected to eat all of it, did I? AMES.-Why, of course.

MISS STUART. -Now, before I go out for two hours more on the baggage truck, will you please ask that man if there is any news of my train?

AMES.-Certainly.

MISS STUART. Thank you.
AMES.-Don't mention it.

AMES (calling into the other room).What do they wire you about?

STATION MASTER. -Nothin' yet about no passenger traffic.

MISS STUART. - Oh! (She sighs with exasperation.) You said there was news. AMES. There will be in a few minutes, now the wire's working.

MISS STUART. - Well, do you still pretend not to understand? AMES.-Understand what?

MISS STUART. That of course I meant men need more sustenance than women, and of course when I said there wasn't enough food for two I meant I didn't want any that is, I did want it, certainly, but I wouldn't touch it because-because you're a man and ought to have it all.

AMES (in an earnestly interested voice). -Do you honestly mean that?

MISS STUART. - Why, of course!
AMES. Are you serious?

MISS STUART.-Why, of course I'm

serious.

AMES. You really wanted me to eat

AMES. - You wouldn't be enough for two.

MISS STUART. - Yes. That's what I "distinctly" said. It really isn't enough for one, is it?

AMES.-Need I explain again, I had no intention of asking to share it with you? MISS STUART.-No. Don't explain again. When I said there wasn't enough for two I meant

VOL. CXLIV. - No. 863.-76

MISS STUART. Certainly.

AMES (remorsefuliy). I thought you were warning me your hospitality was over when it came to one egg and one sandwich.

MISS STUART (glancing at the clock).Ten hours and thirty-seven minutes. You certainly ought to know me well enough to understand better than that! MISS STUART. Of course. It hurts a man a great deal more not to indulge himself than it does a woman. When there's only a little of anything, it ought always to be given to the man.

AMES. Because he's the more selfish? MISS STUART. -No. Because he has to have his strength. A woman can live "on her nerves."

AMES. So you think the woman ought to give up the food to the man? MISS STUART.-I think she'd better! If she didn't she might be mistreated! AMES. SO! Her unselfishness is only self-preservation, is it?

MISS STUART (with a twinkle).-No. She wants to preserve them both. If the Indians come the man will have to do most of the fighting; if the waters rise he'll have to build a raft. If it gets very chilly (she glances at the stove) he'll have to build a fire.

AMES. It is chilly. I wonder- (He rises and goes to the door of the other room.) How about a fire in that stove? STATION MASTER.-It's fixed if you want to light it.

AMES. All right.

[He produces a match, which he lights and places within the door of the

stove.

MISS STUART.-It is a new experience. [She loosens her furs as the glow grows stronger from the stove.

AMES. My lighting a fire for you? MISS STUART (indicating the lunch basket).-No. To see a man making such a fuss about eating when he's starving.

AMES (returning to her, he smiles). Suppose we divide it.

MISS STUART. - You might have thought of that before!

AMES. I might? Why, it was you that said

MISS STUART.-Have you a pocket knife-with a very clean blade? (He hands his knife to her with a blade open.) Yes, I thought you looked like a man who would have. I'll do the dividing and you'll do the choosing. (He sits beside

so that the two parts are anything but equal; the smaller part is about a fifth of the egg. She cuts the sandwich in the same way.) There! Choose.

AMES.-Thanks.

[He takes the small bit of egg and the
tiny fragment of the sandwich.
MISS STUART.-Well, eat them.
[Meanwhile she is cutting the egg and

the sandwich again. AMES (as he swallows the two small bits together). Thanks. Aren't you

MISS STUART. Oh yes, I'm only(She offers the newly divided portions.) Here.

AMES. Oh no. I've had my share. MISS STUART. -That was a test, to see how you'd choose. Now it's a fair division.

AMES. No. I really

[He takes off his overcoat and sits on the bench near her.

MISS STUART. - Don't let's be ridiculous any more. I imagine neither of us has much right to behave like a child of ten-or nineteen, for that matter. Here! [She insists upon his taking what she offers.

AMES. It doesn't seem fair. (He accepts and eats.) Murder! but I'm hungry!

MISS STUART.-And there's still some coffee in the thermos. Didn't you know it?

[She pours it into the cap cup of the bottle as she speaks, turning the bottle upside down to get the last.

AMES. NO! Is there some coffee left? My, my! (She puts the cup in his hand.) Coffee!

MISS STUART.-Yes, that is lucky! (She puts the remaining bit of egg upon the remaining bit of sandwich.) Here, this is yours, too, to go with the coffee. Eat it! (He does so before he thinks.) That's it!

AMES. Oh, lovely! A whole mouthful at once! (He finishes the coffee in a gulp, then starts.) That was yours!

MISS STUART.-No, no, it wasn't. AMES.-Why, it was! Have you given