e piano. "I play by ear. I
see it is late. I must go upstairs. Good night, Mr. Walters."

"Good night, Pen," he said kindly.

He returned to the porch and pipe and lost himself in a haze of
dreams--such dreams as had been wont to come to him in his younger days
when he had been a cow-puncher pure and simple. Gathered about a roaring
camp fire that lighted up the rough and boisterous faces of his
companions, he had seemed as one of them, but later when they had gone to
well-earned slumber and it had been his turn to guard the long lines of
cattle in the cool of the cottonwoods, he had used to gaze into the
mysteries of a desert moon slowly drifting through a cerulean sky and
dream a boy's dream of the woman who was to come to him.

As he grew older and came more into contact with the world, he was brought
to an overwhelming realization that the woman of his dreams did not exist.
The knowledge made an ache in his heart, but to-night he was again longing
with the primary instinct that would not be killed,--longing for the One.

Pen went to bed and to sleep. The next day she was a perfect model of a
young housewife. She helped the children with their little lessons, filled
all the vases, trained some vines, and then with some needlework went out
on the veranda. At the table she listened and responded interestedly to
Mrs. Merlin's bromidic remarks, was gentle with the children and most
flatteringly deferential to Kurt. Of her former banter and coquetry toward
him there was no trace. After the children had gone to bed, she played
cribbage with Mrs. Merlin while Kurt read the papers.

When she was undressing that night she examined her shoulders in the
mirror very closely.

"There should be little wings sprouting. I was never even make-believe
good before. The relapse will be a winner when it comes. If I could only
steady down to something like a normal life. But I never shall."

She was standing pensively by a rosebush the next morning feeling
appallingly weary of well-doing when Kurt in his riding clothes suddenly
appeared before her.

"Would you like to ride this morning?" he asked. "Work is slack just
now."

With a rush of joy she got into her boyish looking outfit and mounted the
horse he had chosen for her, a thoroughbred animal but one far different
from those she had tried out on field day. She was very careful not to try
to outride the foreman, or to perform any of her marvels of horsemanship.
They had a lon