thought of her was in his mind all day. He had worried a good deal
over her disappearance. It was not alone that he felt responsible for
the loss of her place as cigarette girl. One disturbing phase of the
situation was that Jerry Durand must have seen her. What more likely
than that he had arranged to have her spirited away? Lindsay had read
that hundreds of girls disappeared every year in the city. If they
ever came to the surface again it was as dwellers in that underworld in
the current of which they had been caught.

Jerry was a known man in New York. It had been easy for Clay to find
out the location of his saloon and the hotel where he lived. The
cattleman had done some quiet sleuthing, but he had found no trace of
Kitty. Now he knew that she had turned to him in her need and cried
for help.

That she was in trouble did not surprise him. The girl was born for it
as naturally as the sparks fly upward. She was a provocation to those
who prey. In her face there was a disturbing quality quite apart from
her prettiness. Back of the innocence lay some hint of slumberous
passion. Kitty was one of those girls who have the misfortune to stir
the imaginations of men without the ability to keep them at arm's
length. Just what her present difficulty was Clay did not know, but he
was quite sure it had to do with a man. Already he had decided to
rescue her. He had promised to be her friend. It never occurred to
him to stand back when she called.

He had an engagement that afternoon to walk with Beatrice Whitford.
She was almost the only girl in her set who knew how to walk and had
the energy for it. In her movement there was the fluent, untamed grace
that expressed a soul not yet stunted by the claims of convention. The
golden little head was carried buoyantly. In her step was the rhythm
of perfect ease. The supple resilience of her was another expression
of the spiritual quality that spoke in the vivid face.

Clay, watching her as she moved, thought of a paragraph from Mark
Twain's "Eve's Diary":

She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm,
a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds
a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to
it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color mad: brown
rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of
the dawn, the purple shadow on the mountains, the golde