f; those imaginary figures with whom she
took counsel were strangely unresponsive.

She had told Paloma Jones about her dream-children, but she had not
confessed the existence of another and a far more intimate creature of
her brain--one who occupied the place Ed Austin should have held. There
was such a person, however, and Alaire called him her dream husband.
Now this man's physical aspect was never long the same; it altered
according to her changing ideals or to the impression left by new
acquaintances; nevertheless, he was in some ways the most real and the
most tangible of all her pale romantic fancies. No one who has watched
a solitary child at play can doubt that it sees and hears playmates
invisible to others. Alaire Austin, in the remotest depths of her
being, was still a child. Of late her prince had assumed new
characteristics and a new form. He was no longer any one of the many
shapes he had been; he was more like the spirit of the out-of-doors--a
strong-limbed, deep-chested, sun-bronzed creature, with a strain of
gipsy blood that called to hers. He was moody, yet tender, roughly
masculine, and yet possessed of the gentleness and poetry of a girl. He
was violent tempered; he was brave; he rode a magnificent bay mare that
worshiped him, as did all animals.

During one of these introspective periods Alaire telephoned Dave Law,
arguing to herself that she must learn more about her husband's
connection with the Lewis gang. Dave arrived even sooner than she had
expected. She made him dine with her, and they spent the evening on the
dim-lit gallery. In the course of their conversation Alaire discovered
that Dave, too, had a hidden side of his nature; that he possessed an
imagination, and with it a quaint, whimsical, exploratory turn of mind
which enabled him to talk interestingly of many things and many places.
On this particular evening he was anything but the man of iron she had
known--until she ventured to speak of Ed. Then he closed up like a
trap. He was almost gruff in his refusal to say a word about her
husband.

Because of Ed's appropriation of the ranch cash, Alaire found it
necessary a few days later to go to the bank, and, feeling the need of
exercise, she rode her horse Montrose. When her errands had been
attended to, she suddenly decided to call on Paloma Jones. It was years
since she had voluntarily done such a thing; the very impulse surprised
her.

Paloma, it happened, was undergoing that pecu