appreciation at the little pointed toes of Kate's slippers, as they
glanced from below the skirt of her dainty organdie. He noted the band
of pearls on her finger. His eyes rested long on the daisies at her
waist. The wind tossed up little curls of her warm brown hair. Her eyes
suffused with interest, her tender mouth seemed ready to lend itself to
any emotion, and withal she was so small, so compact, so exquisite. The
man wiped his forehead again, in mere exuberance.

"Here's my card," he said, very solemnly, as he drew an engraved bit of
pasteboard from its leather case. Kate bowed and took it.

"Mr. Peter Roeder," she read. "I've no card," she said. "My name is
Shelly. I'm here for my health, as I told you." She rose at this point,
and held out her hand. "I must thank you once more for your kindness,"
she said.

His eyes fastened on hers with an appeal for a less formal word. There
was something almost terrible in their silent eloquence.

"I hope we may meet again," she said.

Mr. Peter Roeder made a very low and awkward bow, and opened the door
into the corridor for her.

That evening the major announced that he was obliged to go to Seattle.
The journey was not an inviting one; Kate was well placed where she was,
and he decided to leave her.

She was well enough now to take longer drives; and she found strange,
lonely canyons, wild and beautiful, where yellow waters burst through
rocky barriers with roar and fury,--tortuous, terrible places, such as
she had never dreamed of. Coming back from one of these drives, two
days after her conversation on the piazza with Peter Roeder, she met
him riding a massive roan. He sat the animal with that air of perfect
unconsciousness which is the attribute of the Western man, and his
attire, even to his English stock, was faultless,--faultily faultless.

"I hope you won't object to havin' me ride beside you," he said,
wheeling his horse. To tell the truth, Kate did not object. She was a
little dull, and had been conscious all the morning of that peculiar
physical depression which marks the beginning of a fit of homesickness.

"The wind gits a fine sweep," said Roeder, after having obtained
the permission he desired. "Now in the gulch we either had a dead
stagnation, or else the wind was tearin' up and down like a wild beast."

Kate did not reply, and they went on together, facing the riotous wind.

"You can't guess how queer it seems t' be here," he said,
confidentiall