Wouldn't that be just dandy on the screen ?" She had found her powder puff and her tiny mirror, and she was dabbing at her nose and her cheeks, which no more needed powder than did the little birds that chirped around her.

Between dabs, she was looking down the mountain, with an occasional wave of her puff toward some particularly "striking effect" of fire and sunset and rolling smoke and tall pines seen dimly in the background.
Jack wanted to climb up there and shake her out of her frivolity.
Which was strange when you consider that all his life, until three months ago, he had lived in the midst of just such unthinking flippancy, had been a part of it and had considered--as much as he ever considered anything--that it was the only life worth living.
He went around the little rock pinnacle and stood looking somberly down at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greater beginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub.

He was thinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in the devastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish bit of play.

The girl irritated him with her chatter--yet three months ago he himself would have considered it brilliant conversation, and would have exerted himself to keep pace with her.
"Listen!" she cried suddenly, and Jack turned his head quickly before he remembered that the word had come to mean nothing more than a superfluous ejaculation hung, like a bangle on a bracelet, to the sentences of modern youth.

"Listen, it's going to be dark before that fire burns itself out of the way.