her father, tarrying at Desert Valley Ranch, the
long, still, hot days were fraught with much new interest. Life was
new and golden, viewed from this fresh viewpoint. Helen had come
hitherward from her city haunts with trepidation; even Longstreet,
serenely optimistic regarding the ultimate crown of success to his
labour, was genuinely delighted. The days passed all too swiftly.

As can in no way be held reprehensible in one of her age and maidenly
beauty and charm, Helen's interest had to do primarily with men, two
men. They, quite as should be in this land of novelty, were unlike the
men she had known. With each passing hour Helen came to see this more
clearly. She was a bright young woman, alert and with at least a
modicum of scientific mental attitude inherited from the machinery of
her father's brain. Like any other healthy young animal, she wanted to
know whys and wherefores and the like.

The evening of their first day, alone in her room for an hour before
bed, she settled for herself the first difference between these men of
the desert fringes and the men she had known at home. To begin with,
she reviewed in mind her old acquaintances: there were a half-dozen
professors, instructors, assistants who called infrequently on her
father and whom she had come to know with a degree of familiarity. The
youngest of them had been twenty years older than Helen, and, whereas
her father was always an old dear, sometimes a hopeless and helpless
old dear, they were simply old fogies. They constituted, however, an
important department in her male friends; the rest were as easily
catalogued. They were the young college men--men in name only, boys in
actuality. They were of her own age or two or four years older or a
year younger. They danced and made mysterious references to the beer
they had wickedly drunk; they motored in their fathers' cars and played
tennis in their fathers' flannels when they fitted; no doubt they were
men in the making, but to judge them as men already was like looking
prematurely into the oven to see how the bread was doing; they were
still under-baked. So far they were playing with the game of life;
life, herself, had not yet taken them seriously, had not reached out
the iron hand that eventually would seize them by the back of the neck,
the slack of the trousers, and pitch them out into the open arena.

Helen was considerably pleased with the result of her meditations: her
father's acade