He had toiled painfully down the ravine, and on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing some signs of water. Now the great salt plain stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant or tree, which might indicate the presence of moisture. In all that broad landscape there was no gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he looked with wild, questioning eyes, and then he realized that his wanderings had come to an end, and that there, on that barren crag, he was about to die. “Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, twenty years hence?” he muttered, as he seated himself in the shelter of a boulder.

Before sitting down, he had deposited upon the ground his useless rifle, and also a large bundle tied up in a gray shawl, which he had carried slung over his right shoulder. It appeared to be somewhat too heavy for his strength, for in lowering it, it came down on the ground with some little violence. Instantly there broke from the gray parcel a little moaning cry, cry and from it there protruded a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, and two little speckled dimpled fists.

“You’ve hurt me!” said a childish voice, reproachfully.

“Have I, though?” the man answered penitently; “I didn’t go for to do it.” As he spoke he unwrapped the gray shawl and extricated a pretty little girl of about five years of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock with its little linen apron, all bespoke a mother’s care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy arms and legs showed that she had suffered less than her companion.

“How is it now?” he answered anxiously, for she was still rubbing the tousy golden curls which covered the back of her head.

“Kiss it and make it well,” she said, with perfect gravity, showing the injured part up to him. “That’s what mother used to do. Where’s mother?”

“Mother’s gone. I guess you‘ll see her before long.”

“Gone, eh!” said the little girl. “Funny, she didn’t say good-bye; she most always did if she was just goin’ over to auntie’s for tea, and now she‘s been away three days. Say, it’s awful dry, ain’t it? Ain‘t there no water nor nothing to eat?”

“No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You‘ll just need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all right. Put your head up ag‘in me like that, and then you’ll feel bullier. It ain‘t easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let you know how the cards lie. What’s that you‘ve got?”

“Pretty things! fine things!” cried the little girl enthusiastically, holding up two glittering fragments of mica. “When we goes back to home I’ll give them to brother Bob.”

“You’ll see prettier things than them soon,” said the man confidently. “You just wait a bit. I was going to tell you though — you remember when we left the river?”

Gudrun could only partly understand. She could have cried with vexation.

‘What does he say?’ she asked Ursula. And Ursula translated, stammering and brief. Loerke watched Gudrun’s face, to see her judgment.

‘And do you think then,’ said Gudrun, ‘that art should serve industry?’

‘Art should INTERPRET industry, as art once interpreted religion,’ he said.

‘But does your fair interpret industry?’ she asked him.

‘Certainly. What is man doing, when he is at a fair like this? He is fulfilling the counterpart of labour—the machine works him, instead of he the machine. He enjoys the mechanical motion, in his own body.’

‘But is there nothing but work—mechanical work?’ said Gudrun.

‘Nothing but work!’ he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes two darknesses, with needle–points of light. ‘No, it is nothing but this, serving a machine, or enjoying the motion of a machine—motion, that is all. You have never worked for hunger, or you would know what god governs us.’

Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was almost in tears.

‘No, I have not worked for hunger,’ she replied, ‘but I have worked!’

‘Travaille—lavorato?’ he asked. ‘E che lavoro—che lavoro? Quel travail est–ce que vous avez fait?’

He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a foreign language when he spoke to her.

‘You have never worked as the world works,’ he said to her, with sarcasm.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have. And I do—I work now for my daily bread.’

He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely. She seemed to him to be trifling.

‘But have YOU ever worked as the world works?’ Ursula asked him.

He looked at her untrustful.

‘Yes,’ he replied, with a surly bark. ‘I have known what it was to lie in bed for three days, because I had nothing to eat.’

Gudrun was looking at him with large, grave eyes, that seemed to draw the confession from him as the marrow from his bones. All his nature held him back from confessing. And yet her large, grave eyes upon him seemed to open some valve in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling.

‘My father was a man who did not like work, and we had no mother. We lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did we live? Ha!—somehow! Mostly in a room with three other families—one set in each corner—and the W.C. in the middle of the room—a pan with a plank on it—ha! I had two brothers and a sister—and there might be a woman with my father. He was a free being, in his way—would fight with any man in the town—a garrison town—and was a little man too. But he wouldn’t work for anybody—set his heart against it, and wouldn’t.’

‘And how did you live then?’ asked Ursula.

He looked at her—then, suddenly, at Gudrun.