and got away, with
his hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.

CHAPTER VII

During the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. He
also neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his other
amusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was a
regular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the country
club, and to which he had never gone before.

The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a number
of local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodge
far out upon the _mesa_, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand and
haunted by lizards and rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of local
society, although there was a more exclusive organization known as the
Forty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never been
invited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his family
had procured him a membership in the country club and it served his
present purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturday
night. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with her
were now the one thing in life to which he looked forward with pleasure,
and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.

In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle of
the town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centre
of the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which were
easily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at her
elfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and when
she went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by at
least three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made her
laugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, he
was always silent and worried--an utter bore, he thought.

This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he
had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with
regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his
silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had
his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his
attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the
purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of