The ten days that followed were among the most important of Dominick Ryan’s life. Looking back at them he wondered that he had been so blind to the transformation¹ of his being which was taking place. Great emotional crises are often not any more recognized, by the individuals, than great transitional epochs are known by the nations experiencing them. Dominick did not realize that the most engrossing³, compelling passion he had ever felt was slowly invading him. He did not argue that he was falling in love with a woman he could never own and of whom it was a sin to think. He did not argue or think about anything. He was as a vessel⁴ gradually filling with elemental forces, and like the vessel he was passive till some jar would shake it and the forces would run over. Meantime he was held by a determination, mutinous⁵ and unreasoning as the determination of a child, to live in the present. He had the feeling of the desert traveler who has found the oasis⁶. The desert lay behind him, burning and sinister⁷ with the agony of his transit², and the desert lay before him with its horrors to be faced, but for the moment he could lie still and rest and forget by the fountain under the cool of the trees.  
He did not consciously think of Rose. But if she were not there he was uneasy till she came again. His secret exhilaration at her approach, the dead blankness of his lack of her when she was absent, told him nothing. These were the feelings he had, and they filled him and left no cool residue⁸ of reason wherewith to watch and guard. He was taken unawares, so drearily⁹ confident of his allegiance to his particular private tragedy that he did not admit the possibility of a defection. A sense of rest was on him and he set it down—if he ever thought of it at all—to the relief of a temporary respite¹⁰. Poor Dominick, with his inexperience of sweet things, did not argue that respite from pain should be a quiescent¹¹, contented¹² condition of being, far removed from that state of secret, troubled gladness that thrilled him at the sound of a woman’s footstep.
 
No situation could have been invented better suited for the fostering of sentiment. His helpless state demanded her constant attention. The attitude of nurse to patient, the solicitude¹³ of the consoling woman for the disabled, suffering man, have been, since time immemorial, recognized aids to romance. Rose, if an unawakened woman, was enough of one to enjoy richly this maternal¹⁵ office of alternate cossetting and ruling one, who, in the natural order of things, should have stood alone in his strength, dictating¹⁶ the law. Perhaps the human female so delights in this particular opportunity for tyranny because it is one of her few chances for indulging her passion for authority.
 
Rose, if she did not quite revel¹⁷ in it, discreetly¹⁸ enjoyed her period of dominance. In the beginning Dominick had been not a man but a patient—about the same to her as the doll is to the little girl. Then when he began to get better, and the man rose, tingling¹⁹ with renewed life, from the ashes of the patient, she quickly fell back into the old position. With the inherited, dainty deceptiveness²⁰ of generations of women, who, while they were virtuous²¹, were also charming, she relinquished²² her dominion²³ and retreated into that enfolded maidenly²⁴ reserve and docility²⁶ which we feel quite sure was the manner adopted by the ladies of the Stone Age when they felt it necessary to manage their lords.
 
She was as unconscious of all this as Dominick was of his growing absorption in her. If he was troubled she was not. The days saw her growing gayer, more blithe²⁷ and light-hearted. She sang about the corridors, her smile grew more radiant, and every man in the hotel felt the power of her awakening²⁸ womanhood. Her boyish frankness of demeanor²⁹ was still undimmed by the first blurring³⁰ breath of passion. If Dominick was not in the parlor³¹ her disappointment was as candid³² as a child’s whose mother has forgotten to bring home candy. All that she showed of consciousness was that when he was there and there was no disappointment, she concealed³³ her satisfaction, wrapped herself in a sudden, shy quietness, as completely extinguishing of all beneath as a nun’s habit.
 
The continued, enforced intimacy³⁴ into which their restricted quarters and indoor life threw them could not have been more effectual in fanning the growing flame if designed by a malicious³⁵ Fate. There was only one sitting-room³⁶, and, unable to go out, they sat side by side in it all day. They read together, they talked, they played cards. They were seldom alone, but the presence of Bill Cannon³⁷, groaning³⁸ over the fire with a three-weeks-old newspaper for company, was not one that diverted their attention from each other; and Cora and Willoughby, as opponents in a game of euchre, only helped to accentuate³⁹ the comradeship which leagued them together in defensive⁴⁰ alliance.
 
The days that were so long to others were to them of a bright, surprising shortness. Playing solitaire against each other on either side of the fireplace was a pastime at which hours slipped by. Quite unexpectedly it would be midday, with Cora putting her head round the door-post and calling them to dinner. In the euchre games of the afternoon the darkness crept upon them with the stealthy swiftness of an enemy. It would gather in the corners of the room while Cora was still heated and flushed from her efforts to instruct Willoughby in the intricacies of the game, and yet preserve that respectful attitude which she felt should be assumed in one’s relations with a lord.
 
The twilight⁴¹ hour that followed was to Dominick’s mind the most delightful⁴² of these days of fleeting⁴³ enchantment⁴⁴. The curtains were drawn⁴⁵, a new log rolled on the fire, and the lamp lit. Then their fellow prisoners began dropping in—the old judge stowing himself away in one of the horsehair arm-chairs, Willoughby and Buford lounging in from the bar, Mrs. Perley with a basket of the family mending, and the doctor all snowy from his rounds. The audience for Rose’s readings had expanded from the original listener to this choice circle of Antelope⁴⁶’s elect. The book chosen had been Great Expectations, and the spell of that greatest tale of a great romancer fell on the snow-bound group and held them entranced and motionless round the friendly hearth⁴⁷.
 
The young man’s eyes passed from face to face, avoiding only that of the reader bent⁴⁸ over the lamp-illumined page. The old judge, sunk comfortably into the depths of his arm-chair, listened, and cracked the joints⁴⁹ of his lean, dry fingers. Willoughby, his dogs crouched⁵⁰ about his feet, looked into the fire, his attentive⁵¹ gravity broken now and then by a slow smile. Mrs. Perley, after hearing the chapter which describes Mrs. Gargery’s methods of bringing up Pip “by hand,” attended regularly with the remark that “it was a queer sort of book, but some way or other she liked it.” When Cora was forced to leave to attend to her duties in the dining-room, she tore herself away with murmurous⁵² reluctance⁵³. The doctor slipped in at the third reading and asked Rose if she would lend him the book in the morning “to read up what he had missed.” Even Perley’s boy, in his worn corduroys, his dirty, chapped hands rubbing his cap against his nose, was wont⁵⁴ to sidle noiselessly in and slip into a seat near the door.
 
The climax⁵⁵ of the day was the long evening round the fire. There was no reading then. It was the men’s hour, and the smoke of their pipes and cigars lay thick in the air. Cut off from the world in this cranny of the mountains, with the hotel shaking to the buffets⁵⁶ of the wind and the snow blanket pressing on the pane⁵⁷, their memories swept back to the wild days of their youth, to the epic⁵⁸ times of frontiersman and pioneer.
 
The judge told of his crossing of the plains in forty-seven and the first Mormon settlement on the barren shores of Salt Lake. He had had encounters with the Indians, had heard the story of Olive Oatman from one who had known her, and listened to the sinister tale of the Donner party from a survivor⁵⁹. Bill Cannon had “come by the Isthmus” in forty-eight, a half-starved, ragged⁶⁰ lad who had run away from uncongenial drudgery⁶¹ on a New York farm. His reminiscences went back to the San Francisco that started up around Portsmouth Square, to the days when the banks of the American River swarmed⁶² with miners, and the gold lay yellow in the prospector’s pan. He had worked there shoulder to shoulder with men who afterwards made the history of the state and men who died with their names unknown. He had been an eye witness of that blackest of Californian tragedies, the lynching of a Spanish girl at Downieville, had stood pallid⁶³ and sick under a pine tree and watched her boldly face her murderers and meet her death.
 
The younger men, warmed to emulation⁶⁴, contributed their stories. Perley had reminiscences bequeathed to him by his father who had been an alcalde in that transition year, when California was neither state nor territory and stood in unadministered neglect, waiting for Congress to take some notice of her. Buford had stories of the vicissitudes⁶⁵ of a strolling player’s life. He had been in the Klondike during the first gold rush and told tales of mining in the North to match those of mining on the “mother lode⁶⁶.” Willoughby, thawed⁶⁷ out of his original shyness, added to the nights’ entertainments stories of the Australian bush, grim legends of the days of the penal⁶⁸ settlements at Botany Bay. Young Ryan was the only man of the group who contributed nothing to these Sierran Nights’ Entertainments. He sat silent in his chair, apparently⁶⁹ listening, and, under the shadow of the hand arched over his eyes, looking at the girl opposite.
 
But the idyl had to end. Their captivity⁷⁰ passed into its third week, and signs that release was at hand cheered them. They could go out. The streets of Antelope were beaten into footpaths⁷¹, and the prisoners, with the enthusiasm of children liberated⁷² from school, rushed into open-air diversions and athletic⁷³ exercise. The first word from the outside world came by restored telegraphic communication. Consolatory⁷⁴ messages poured in from San Francisco. Mrs. Ryan, the elder, sent telegrams as long as letters and showered them with the prodigality⁷⁵ of an impassioned gratitude⁷⁶ on the camp. Perley had one that he could not speak of without growing husky. Willoughby had one that made him blush. Dominick had several. None, however, had come from his wife and he guessed that none had been sent her, his remark to Rose to “let her alone” having been taken as a wish to spare her anxiety. It was thought that the mail would be in now in a day or two. That would be the end of the fairy tale. They sat about the fire on these last evenings discussing their letters, what they expected, and whom they would be from. No one told any more stories; the thought of news from “outside” was too absorbing.
 
It came in the early dusk of an afternoon near the end of the third week. Dominick, who was still unable to walk, was standing⁷⁷ by the parlor window, when he saw Rose Cannon run past outside. She looked in at him as she ran by, her face full of a joyous⁷⁸ excitement, and held up to his gaze a small white packet. A moment later the hall door banged, her foot sounded in the passage, and she entered the room with a rush of cold air and a triumphant⁷⁹ cry of:
 
“The mail’s come!”
 
He limped forward to meet her and take from her hand the letter she held toward him. For the first moment he looked at her, not at the letter, which dwindled⁸⁰ to a thing of no importance when their eyes met over it. Her face was nipped by the keen outside air into a bright, beaming rosiness⁸¹. She wore on her head a man’s fur cap which was pulled well down, and pressed wisps of fair hair against her forehead and cheeks. A loose fur-lined coat enveloped⁸² her to her feet, and after she had handed him his letter she pulled off the mittens⁸³ she wore and began unfastening the clasps of the coat, with fingers that were purplish and cramped⁸⁴ from the cold.
 
“There’s only one for you,” she said. “I waited till the postmaster looked all through them twice. Then I made him give it to me and ran back here with it. The entire population of Antelope’s in the post-office and there’s the greatest excitement.”
 
Her coat was unfastened and she threw back its long fronts, her figure outlined against the gray fur lining⁸⁵. She snatched off her cap and tossed it to an adjacent chair and with a quick hand brushed away the hair it had pressed down on her forehead.
 
“I got seven,” she said, tur............