He could not but observe that the attendants treated him with added respect by reason of his acquaintance with the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the camp.
She had made his loneliness very keen and hard to bear.
As he walked down the street he thought of Mary--she seemed to be a sister to the distant, calm and glorious moon just launching into the sky above the serrate wall of snowy peaks to the East.

There was a powerful appeal in the vivid and changeful woman he had just met, for her like had never touched his life before.
As he climbed back up the hill toward the corral where he had left his horse, he was filled with a wordless disgust of the town and its people.
The night was still and cool, almost frosty.

The air so clear and so rare filled his lungs with wholesomely sweet and reanimating breath.

His head cleared, and his heart grew regular in its beating.

The moon was sailing in mid-ocean, between the Great Divide and the Christo Range, cold and sharp of outline as a boat of silver.