in the telling and began to marshal his facts a third time. He had
expected an eager interest, a quick enthusiasm. Instead, he found in
his young mistress a spirit beyond his understanding. Her manner had a
touch of cool disdain, almost of contempt, while she listened to his
tale. This was not at all in the picture he had planned.

She asked no questions and made no comments. What he had to tell met
with chill silence. Johnnie's guileless narrative had made clear to
her that Clay had brought Kitty home about midnight, had mixed a drink
for her, and had given her his own clothes to replace her wet ones.
Somehow the cattleman's robe, pajamas, and bedroom slippers obtruded
unduly from his friend's story. Even the Runt felt this. He began to
perceive himself a helpless medium of wrong impressions. When he tried
to explain he made matters worse.

"I suppose you know that when the manager of your apartment house finds
out she's there he'll send her packing." So Beatrice summed up when
she spoke at last.

"No, ma'am, I reckon not. You see we done told him she is Clay's
sister jes' got in from the West," the puncher explained.

"Oh, I see." The girl's lip curled and her clean-cut chin lifted a
trifle. "You don't seem to have overlooked anything. No, I don't
think I care to have anything to do with your arrangements."

"She's an awful pretty cute little thing," the puncher added, hoping to
modify her judgment.

"Indeed!"

Beatrice turned and walked swiftly into the house. A pulse of anger
was beating in her soft throat. She felt a sense of outrage. To Clay
Lindsay she had given herself generously in spirit. She had risked
something in introducing him to her friends. They might have laughed
at him for his slight social lapses. They might have rejected him for
his lack of background. They had done neither. He was so genuinely a
man that he had won his way instantly. In this City of Bluff, as O.
Henry dubs New York, his simplicity had rung true as steel. Still, she
had taken a chance and felt she deserved some recognition of it on his
part. This he had never given. He had based their friendship on
equality simply. She liked it in him, though her vanity had resented
it a little. But this was different. She was still young enough,
still so little a woman of the world, that she set a rigid standard
which she expected her friends to meet. She had believed in Clay, and
now he was failing her.

Pa