There was little speech in the moving caravan. With each day their words
grew fewer, their laughter and light talk dwindled. Gradual changes had
crept into the spirit of the party. Accumulations of habit and custom
that had collected upon them in the dense life of towns were dropping
away. As the surface refinements of language were dying, so their faces
had lost a certain facile play of expression. Delicate nuances of
feeling no longer showed, for they no longer existed. Smiles had grown
rarer, and harder characteristics were molding their features into
sterner lines. The acquired deceptiveness of the world of men was
leaving them. Ugly things that they once would have hidden cropped out
unchecked by pride or fear of censure. They did not care. There was no
standard, there was no public opinion. Life was resolving itself into a
few great needs that drove out all lesser and more delicate desires.
Beings of a ruder make were usurping their bodies. The primitive man in
them was rising to meet the primitive world.
In the young girl the process of elimination was as rapid if not as
radical as in the case of the men.
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