r his place at El Nauar. He had several
other things in view--" she shrugged--"but _The Mohave_ sailed suddenly
with its owner for a voyage around the world--so John was
told;--and--Valerie, it's the first clear breath of relief I've drawn
since Penrhyn Cardemon entered John's studio."

"I didn't know he had ever been there."

"Yes; twice."

"Did you see him there?"

"Yes. I nearly dropped. At first he did not recognise me--I was very
young--when--"

"Did he speak to you?"

"Yes. I managed to answer. John was not looking at me, fortunately....
After that he wrote to me--and I burned the letter.... It was horrible;
he said that Jose Querida was his guest at El Nauar, and he asked me to
get you because you knew Querida, and be his guest for a week end.... I
cried that night; you heard me."

"Was _that_ it!" asked Valerie, very pale.

"Yes; I was too wretched to tell you,"

Valerie sat silent, her teeth fixed in her lower lip. Then:

"Jose could not have known what kind of a man the--other--is."

"I hope not."

"Oh, he _couldn't_ have known! Rita, he wouldn't have let him ask us--"

"Men seldom deceive one another."

"You _don't_ think Jose Querida _knew_?"

"I--don't--think.... Valerie, men are very--very unlike women....
Forgive me if I seem to be embittered.... Even you have had your
experience with men--the men that all the world seems to like--kind,
jolly, generous, jovial, amusing men--and clever men; men of attainment,
of distinction. And they--the majority of them--are, after all, just
men, Valerie, just men in a world made for men, a world into which we
come like timid intruders; uncertain through generations of
uncertainty--innocently stupid through ages of stupid innocence, ready
to please though not knowing exactly how; ready to be pleased, God
knows, with pleasures as innocent as the simple minds that dream of
them.

"Valerie, I do not believe any evil first came into this world of men
through any woman."

Valerie looked down at her folded hands--small, smooth, white hands,
pure of skin and innocent as a child's.

"I don't know," she said, troubled, "how much more unhappiness arises
through men than through women, if any more ... I like men. Some are
unruly--like children; some have the sense and the morals of marauding
dogs.

"But, at worst, the unruly and the marauders seem so hopelessly beneath
one, intellectually, that a girl's resentment is really more of
contempt than of anger-