guest overnight at the post. She had come the
afternoon before, bright as a bubble, and Frances had met her with a
welcome as warm as if there never had been a shadow between them.

Women can do such things so much better than men. Balzac said they
could murder under the cover of a kiss. Perhaps somebody else said it
ahead of him; certainly a great many of us have thought it after.
There is not one out of the whole world of them but is capable of
covering the fire of lies in her heart with the rose leaves of her
smiles.

Nola had come into Frances' room to do her hair, and employ her busy
tongue while she plied the brush. She was a pretty bit of a figure in
her fancily-worked Japanese kimono and red Turkish slippers--harem
slippers, she called them, and thought it deliciously wicked to wear
them--as she sat shaking back her bright hair like a giver of
sunbeams.

Frances, already dressed in her soft light apparel of the morning,
stood at the window watching the activity of the avenue below,
answering encouragingly now and then, laughing at the right time, to
keep the stream of her little guest's words running on. Frances seemed
all softness and warmth, all youth and freshness, as fair as a
camellia in a sunny casement, there at the window with the light
around her. Above that inborn dignity which every line of her body
expressed, there was a domestic tranquillity in her subdued beauty
that moved even irresponsible Nola with an admiration that she could
not put into words.

"Oh, you soldiers!" said Nola, shaking her brush at Frances' placid
back, "you get up so early and you dress so fast that you're always
ahead of everybody else."

Frances turned to her, a smile for her childish complaint.

"You'll get into our soldiering ways in time, Nola. We get up early
and live in a hurry, I suppose, because a soldier's life is
traditionally uncertain, and he wants to make the most of his time."

"And love and ride away," said Nola, feigning a sigh.

"Do they?" asked Frances, not interested, turning to the window
again.

"Of course," said Nola, positively.

"Like the guardsmen of old England,
Or the beaux sabreurs of France--"

that's an old border song, did you ever hear it?"

"No, I never did."

"It's about the Texas rangers, though, and not real soldiers like you
folks. A cavalryman's wife wrote it; I've got it in a book."

"Maybe they do that way in Texas, Nola."

"How?"

"Love and ride away, as y