en and women do in Chicago.
They touched hands, and the blood quickened, the old Chicago style.
They talked plain English, they liked pretty clothes, they worshiped
good horses, they lived on the boundless plains. What on earth was
there to ask? Quite suddenly, Connie understood them perfectly.

But Prince realized that he was not making good. His one claim to
admission in her presence was his ability to tell her what she wanted
to know. He had got to tell her things,--but what things? My stars,
what did she want to know? How old he was, where he was born, if he
was married,--oh, by George, she didn't think he was married, did she?

"I am not married," he said abruptly. David looked around at him in
surprise, and Carol's eyes opened widely. But Connie, with what must
have been literary intuition, understood. She nodded at him and smiled
as she asked, "Have you always lived out here?"

"No." He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath. Here was
a starter, it would be his own fault if he could not keep talking the
rest of the night. "No, I came out from Columbus when I was eighteen.
Came for my health." He squared his shoulders again, and laughed a big
deep laugh which made Connie marvel that there should be such big deep
laughs in the world.

"My father was a doctor. He sent me out, and I got a job punching time
in the mines at Cripple Creek. I met some stock men, and one of them
offered me a job, and I came out and got in with them. Then I got hold
of a bit of land and began gathering up stock for myself. I stayed
with the Sparker outfit six years, and then my father died. I took the
money and got my start, and--why, that is all." He stopped in
astonishment. He had been sure his story would last several hours. He
had begun at the very start, his illness at eighteen, and here he was
right up to the present, and--he rubbed his knee despairingly. There
must be something else. There had to be something else. What under
the sun had he been doing all these fourteen years in the ranges?

"Don't you ever wish to go back?" Connie prompted kindly.

"Back to Columbus? I went twice to see my father. He had a private
sanatorium. My booming voice gave his nervous patients prostrations,
and father thought my clothes were not sanitary because they could not
be sterilized. Are you going to stay here for good?"

It was very risky to ask, he knew, but he had to find out.

"I am visiting my sist