orm. It blew strands of the red-brown hair from beneath the closely
fitting travelling-hat; blew color into Miss Brewster's cheeks and a
daring brightness into the laughing eyes.

"What a pity!" she said in mock sympathy.

"That I can't measure up to your requirements of the perfect man? Yes,
it is a thousand pities," he agreed.

"No; that isn't precisely what I meant. The pity is that I seem to you
to be unable to appreciate your many excellencies and your--constancy."

"I think you were born to torment me," he rejoined gloomily. "Why did
you come out here with your father? You must have known that I was
here."

"Not from any line you have ever written," she retorted. "Alicia Ford
told me, otherwise I shouldn't have known."

"Still, you came. Why? Were you curious?"

"Why should I be curious, and what about?--the Red Desert? I've seen
deserts before."

"I thought you might be curious to know what disposition the Red Desert
was making of such a failure as I am," he said evenly. "I can forgive
that more easily than I can forgive your bringing of the other man along
to be an on-looker."

"Herbert, you mean? He is a good boy, a nice boy--and perfectly
harmless. You'll like him immensely when you come to know him better."

"You like him?" he queried.

"How can you ask--when you have just called him 'the other man'?"

Lidgerwood turned in his chair and faced her squarely.

"Eleanor, I had my punishment over a year ago, and I have been hoping
you would let it suffice. It was hard enough to lose you without being
compelled to stand by and see another man win you. Can't you understand
that?"

She did not answer him. Instead, she whipped aside from that phase of
the subject to ask a question of her own.

"What ever made you come out here, Howard?"

"To the superintendency of the Red Butte Western? You did."

"I?"

"Yes, you."

"It is ridiculous!"

"It is true."

"Prove it--if you can; but you can't."

"I am proving it day by day, or trying to. I didn't want to come, but
you drove me to it."

"I decline to take any such hideous responsibility," she laughed
lightly. "There must have been some better reason; Miss Dawson,
perhaps."

"Quite likely, barring the small fact that I didn't know there was a
Miss Dawson until I had been a month in Angels."

"Oh!" she said half spitefully. And then, with calculated malice,
"Howard, if you were only as brave as you are clever!... Why can't you
be a man and s