ing the letter and gave the entrance no thought. Still she could
not shake off the consciousness of somebody walking up close to the
desk where she stood and sitting down on one of the counter stools.
She refused to look up, even though she felt that eyes were on her.

A natural impulse of defiance at the uninvited scrutiny possessed her.
And being resolved she would not admit she was conscious of it, she
turned from the desk and looking straight toward the glass door
connecting with the dining-room, and behind the end of the counter, she
walked briskly past the intruding presence.

As she did so, Kate somehow felt with every step that she could not get
out of the room unchallenged. But even then she was riding to a rude
surprise for she had reached the door without incident when she heard
two words: "Slow, Kate." She had already laid her hand on the knob and
she turned it with indignation. The wretched door refused to open! It
was Belle's afternoon off and she had locked the door.

Even then a collected girl would not have surrendered to the situation.
But Kate never could be collected at just the right time. She was
usually quite collected when it made no difference whether she was
collected or not. All she now did was to look blankly around. A man
sat at the counter, a man she had never seen before. He was
deliberately lifting a broad horseman's hat from a rather round, high
forehead and disclosing a head of inoffensive-looking sandy hair, very
much sun-and-wind bleached. His smooth face, his ears and neck and
open throat, were colored by a strictly uniform pigment--tinctured by
many mountain winds into a reddish brown and burnt by many mountain
suns into a seemingly immutable bronze. The face was long with an
ample nose, a peaceful-looking mouth and unruffled gray eyes. The man
was very like and yet unlike many of the mountain men she had seen.
She remembered afterward that this was her first impression: at that
moment she was not analyzing it: "Where are you going?" he asked, as
she stood looking at him.

Her resentment at the rudeness rose. Could a prophetic spirit have
warned Kate that this was to be only the first of more than one serious
encounter with the eyes steadily regarding her, her astonishment and
indignation might have been restrained. As it was, forgetting her own
position and descending to Western brusqueness, she retorted icily: "I
can't see how that can possibly interest you."

I