west, and a delicious, dry coolness was in the
cañon.
It seemed to Clement to be a very fashionable and leisurely throng--so
long had he been absent from people either modish or easeful. He felt
himself to be hopelessly outside all this youth and brilliancy and
merriment, and he looked upon it all with a certain wistfulness.
He perceived at length that the strollers were not all of the same
conditions. There were rough, brown cow-boys from La Junta and
Cajon, and miners in rough dress down from the gulches for a night,
but mainly the promenaders appealed to him with elegance of dress and
manner.
Many of the ladies came without hats, which added to the charm of
their eyes and hair. Some of them looked twice at the tall man with the
big mustache and broad hat, who seemed to be watching for some tardy
friend.
As he studied them his memory freshened and he came to understand
them better. He analyzed them into familiar types. This was a banker
and his wife from some small town--the wife fussy and consequential,
the husband coldly dignified. This group was composed of a doctor and
his daughters. Behind them came a merchant from some Nebraska
town--he rough of exterior, his children dainty of dress and very pretty.
Occasionally a group of college-bred girls came up without
escort--alert, self-helpful and serene. They saw Clement at once, and
studied him carefully as they drank their beauty cup at the circular
bench before the spring. All good-looking men had interest to them.
All classes came, a varied stream, yet they were Western, and of the
well-to-do condition for the larger part.
The deft boy swung the glasses of water on his tripartite dipper with
ceaseless splash and clink. There was a pleasant murmur of talk in
which an Eastern listener would have heard the "r" sound well-defined.
There were many couples seated about the pavilion on the benches and
railings. It was all busy yet tranquil. Each loiterer had fed, had taken his
draught of healing water--and this was the hour of pleasant gossip and
repose. Clement fell at last to analyzing the action of the boy who
supplied the water at the pool. He slammed the glasses into the pool,
and set them on the bench with a click as regular as a pump.
Occasionally, however, he was indifferent. With some of his customers
he handled the glasses as if they contained nectar, thus indicating his
generous patrons. Once he stopped and dipped the glass into the pool
with his own hand--a doubtful action--and extended it with a bow to a
young lady who said "thank you" so sweetly that he blushed and
stammered in reply.
All this fixed Clement's attention, and as the young girl lifted the glass
in her slim hand he wondered how she had escaped his notice for a
single moment. A woman at his side said sighfully, "There is that
consumptive girl again, she hasn't long to stay." She was as pale, as
fragile, and as lovely as the mountain columbine. Her face was thin,
and her head shapely, but her eyes! They burned like rarest topaz--deep,
dark and sad. Clement shivered as he felt them fixed upon him, and yet
he could not turn away as he should have done.
He gazed at her with a sudden feeling which was not awe, nor
compassion, nor love, but was all of these. He felt in his soul the
subtlest sadness in all the world--the sadness of a strong man who looks
upon a beautiful young girl who is dying.
Extremest languor was in every movement. She was dressed in dark,
soft garments--very simple and graceful in effect, and her bearing was
that of one accustomed to willing service from others. Her smile was as
sad as her eyes which had in them the death-shadow.
Clement's action, the unwavering self-forgetful intentness of his look,
arrested her attention, and she returned his gaze for an instant, and then
turned away and took the arm of an elderly gentleman who stood
beside her. She moved slowly, as an invalid walks when for the first
time she is permitted a short walk in the outdoor air, leaning heavily on
her companion.
The big miner roused himself and stood straight and tall, hesitating
whether to follow or not--a sudden singular pain in his heart, as if he
were losing something very close to his life.
He obeyed the impulse to follow, and moved down the path, just out of
reach of observation, he fancied. As he made way through the crowd he
grew aware again of his heavy limbs, of his great height, of his
swinging, useless hands. It had been so long since he had mingled with
a holiday company, he appeared as
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