t you tell us?"

"It was nothin' to brag about."

Bromfield came to time with a thin word of thanks. "We're all greatly
in your debt, Mr. Lindsay."

As the days passed the malicious jealousy of the New York clubman
deepened to a steady hatred. A fellow of ill-controlled temper, his
thin-skinned vanity writhed at the condition which confronted him. He
was engaged to a girl who preferred another and a better man, one
against whom he had an unalterable grudge. He recognized in the
Westerner an eager energy, a clean-cut resilience, and an abounding
vitality he would have given a great deal to possess. His own early
manhood had been frittered away in futile dissipations and he resented
bitterly the contrast between himself and Lindsay that must continually
be present in the mind of the girl who had promised to marry him. He
had many adventitious things to offer her--such advantages as modern
civilization has made desirable to hothouse women--but he could not
give the clean, splendid youth she craved. It was the price he had
paid for many sybaritic pleasures he had been too soft to deny himself.

With only a little more than two weeks of freedom before her, Beatrice
made the most of her days. For the first time in her life she became a
creature of moods. The dominant ones were rebellion, recklessness, and
repentance. While Bromfield waited and fumed she rode and tramped with
Clay. It was not fair to her affianced lover. She knew that. But
there were times when she wanted to shriek as dressmakers and costumers
fussed over her and wore out her jangled nerves with multitudinous
details. The same hysteria welled up in her occasionally at the
luncheons and dinners that were being given in honor of her approaching
marriage.

It was not logical, of course. She was moving toward the destiny she
had chosen for herself. But there was an instinct in her, savage and
primitive, to hurt Bromfield because she herself was suffering. In the
privacy of her room she passed hours of tearful regret for these bursts
of fierce insurrection.

Ten days before the wedding Beatrice wounded his vanity flagrantly.
Clarendon was giving an informal tea for her at his rooms. Half an
hour before the time set, Beatrice got him on the wire and explained
that her car was stalled with engine trouble two miles from Yonkers.

"I'm awf'ly sorry, Clary," she pleaded. "We ought not to have come so
far. Please tell our friends I've been del