linking in its glare. A second later he reeled back against the
edge of the desk, his hands gripping it, dumb, amazed, physically sick
with a fear that he had suddenly gone insane. For in a big chair in a
corner of the room, sleepy-eyed, tired, but looking very becoming in her
simple dress with a light cloak over it, the collar turned up, so that it
gave her an appearance of attractive negligence, a smile of delighted
welcome on her face, was Hester Harvey.

She got up as he stood staring dumfoundedly at her and moved toward him,
with an air of artful supplication that brought a gasp out of him--of
sheer relief.

"Won't you welcome me, Trev? I have come very far, to see you." She held
out her hands and went slowly toward him, mutely pleading, her eyes
luminous with love--which she did not pretend, for the boy she had known
had grown into the promise of his youth--big, magnetic--a figure for any
woman to love.

He had been looking at her intently, narrowly, searchingly. He saw what
she herself had not seen--the natural changes that ten years had brought
to her. He saw other things--that she had not suspected--a certain blase
sophistication; a too bold and artful expression of the eyes--as though
she knew their power and the lure of them; the slightly hard curve in the
corners of her mouth; a second character lurking around her--indefinite,
vague, repelling--the subconscious self, that no artifice can hide--the
sin and the shame of deeds unrepented. If there had been a time when he
had loved her, its potence could not leap the lapse of years and overcome
his repugnance for her kind, and he looked at her coldly, barring her
progress with a hand, which caught her two and held them in a grip that
made her wince.

"What are you doing here? How did you get in? When did you come?" He fired
the questions at her roughly, brutally.

"Why, Trev." She gulped, her smile fading palely. The conquest was not to
be the easy one she had thought--though she really wanted him--more than
ever, now that she saw she was in danger of losing him. She explained,
earnestly pleading with eyes that had lost their power to charm him.

"I heard you were here--that you were in trouble. I want to help you. I
got here night before last--to Manti. Rosalind Benham had written about
you to Ruth Gresham--a friend of hers in New York. Ruth Gresham told me. I
went directly from Manti to Benham's ranch. Then I came here--about dusk,
last night. There was