the male accustomed
to easy conquest.

This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him.
She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was a
puzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And he
was utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enough
to doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination as
something high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed to
have oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough--in fact too
persistently--but he did it because he could not help it.

The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became.
When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a faint
tremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms of
his hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself.
And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression upon
her. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at him
with an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for a
dance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too wholly
absorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed to
him that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the least
mitigate his devotion, but it made him acutely uncomfortable to watch her
dance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.

Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in the
tin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weak
throat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family by
resolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most of
his time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera,
studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He
said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of
his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague
meaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.

Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably a
gifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of the
natives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in the
West. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not to
welcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth's regularly. He be