y she felt what was passing in his
mind and demurely fibbed for his reassurance: "Mamma recovered it--I
think she said it was found at the gate--and brought it to me. I knew it
was yours from the memoranda on the first page, but forgot to return it
before. I sincerely hope I have not caused you any inconvenience?"

He was almost vehement in his eagerness to assure her that it was
altogether a matter of no moment, but her eyes twinkled mischievously as
she noted the care with which he bestowed it in a safe place. "After
all, men are only boys grown up," she thought, and her regard for him
was ludicrously maternal. She felt an almost irresistible desire to
lecture him on the folly of his ways and the dangerous possibilities
attendant on the writing of erotic verse; she actually began a homily on
the uncertainty of life and one's logical duty of the enjoyment of
things actually in possession rather than the pitiable craving for the
unattainable. She had cleverly led up to it by enthusiastically admiring
the beauty of the perfect night and the understandable attraction that
these glorious surroundings had for everyone who came into intimate
contact with them.

Once, in the emphasizing of some vital point in issue, she impulsively
laid her gloved hand on his arm; the man started as if he had been stung
and she recoiled from the hunger in his eyes. The mothering of a lion
cub has its disadvantages, and thereafter her milk of human kindness
overflowed no more.

There was an evident suspicion evinced in the keen attention he was
paying to her words as she trenched on the delicate topic of logical
content with one's militant blessings, and she ingeniously proceeded to
disarm it.

"Why is it that among the thousands of susceptible and impressionable
souls that have reveled in these delights, not one has had the moral
courage to depict them in print? The labor would surely be one of love
and the inspiration never lacks."

"Possibly," he suggested, "it is a matter of sheer mental and literary
inability. But few have been endowed with the gift of Genius. And then,
again, authorship is necessarily an affair of leisure, and life is apt
to be strenuous in these hills." He turned in his saddle and laughingly
asked her: "How much time could your cowpunchers afford to devote to the
Muses, Miss Grace?"

"Genius knows no paltry restrictions of time and place," she said, with
some acerbity, "and I know of at least one of the men you m