nd.

And so it happened that, notwithstanding her cordial welcome and her
respectful consideration of his criticism, he went away with a feeling
of disappointment. That her beauty was more deeply enthralling than he
had hitherto realized made his disquiet all the greater. As he stepped
out upon the street, she seemed as insubstantial as a dream of his
imaginative youth, far separated from any reality with which he had any
durable association.

X

CURTIS AT HEADQUARTERS

Curtis was frankly exclamatory at the size and splendor of Lawson's
apartments. He had accepted the invitation to take breakfast with him
without much thought as to the quality of the breakfast or where it
would be eaten, until he found himself entering the hall of a superb
apartment hotel.

"Why, see here, Lawson," he exclaimed, as he looked about his friend's
suite, "this is too much for any bachelor--it's baronial! I must revise
my judgments. I had a notion you were a hard-working ethnologic sharp."

"So I am," replied Lawson, smiling with frank enjoyment of his visitor's
amazement. "I've been at work two hours at my desk. If you don't believe
it, there's the desk."

The room was filled with books, cases of antique pottery, paintings of
Indians, models of Pueblo dwellings, and other things in keeping, and
was made rich in color by a half-dozen very choice Navajo blankets in
the fine old weaves with the vegetable dyes so dear to the collector.
The long table was heaped with current issues of the latest magazines,
and dozens of books, with markers set to guard some valuable passages,
were piled within reach. It was plainly the library of a student and man
of letters.

Lawson's lean, brown face at once assumed a different aspect to Curtis.
It became more refined, more scholarly, and distinctly less shrewd and
quizzical, and the soldier began to understand the writer's smiling
defiance of Western politicians and millionaire cattle-owners. Plainly a
man of large fortune, with high social connections, what had Lawson to
fear of the mountain West? The menace of the greedy cattlemen troubled
him no more than the howl of the blizzard.

In the same measure that Lawson's power was revealed to him the heart of
the agent sank. He could not but acknowledge that here was the fitting
husband and proper home for Elsie--"while I," he thought, "have only a
barrack in a desolate Indian country to offer her," and he swung deep in
the trough of his sea