noon
He had gambled , yes ; but it was for her sake he had gambled ; he had lost , yes , but it was she he had lost . He flung himself down on the bare red hilltop , and with his chin in his hands , gazed across irrigated meadows and parched foothills to the grim slope of the mountains . And stretched there , with his elbows digging into the sandy soil , his mind bracing itself against the everlasting hills , he let the past draw near . There was an atmosphere about that past , a play of light and shadow , a mist of poetry and romance , that made the Colorado landscape in the searching noon light seem typical of the life he had led there : -- a crude , prosaic , _ metallic _ sort of life . And after the first shrinking from the past , his mind began to feel deliciously at home in it . How he had loved Dorothy Ray ! How the thought of her had pervaded his life , as the sunshine pervades a landscape !