transformation, after reading a letter, with the brief statement, "Mrs.
Grayson and Sylvia will join us to-morrow."

All had begun to pine for feminine society, as soldiers, long on the
march, desire the sight of women and the sound of their voices. It is
true that they saw women often, and many of them--some who were
beautiful and some who were not--as they sped through the West, but it
was always a flitting and blurred glimpse. "I haven't got an impression
of the features of a single one of them," complained the elderly beau,
Tremaine. Now two women whom they knew well and liked would be with them
for days, and they rejoiced accordingly.

It was at a little junction station in eastern Colorado, in the clear
blue-and-silver of a fine morning, that Mrs. Grayson and Sylvia met
them. Mr. Grayson and his party had been down about fifty miles on a
branch line for a speech at a town of importance, and they had begun the
return journey before daylight in order to make the connection. But when
the gray dawn came through the dusty car-windows, it was odd to see how
neat and careful all appeared, even under such difficult circumstances.

Harley was surprised to realize the eagerness with which he looked
forward to the meeting, and put it down to the long lack of feminine
society. But he wondered if Sylvia had changed, if the nearer approach
of her marriage with "King" Plummer would make her reserved and with her
outlook on the future--that is, as one apart.

He had a favorable seat in the car and he was the first to see them. The
junction was a tiny place of not more than a half-dozen houses standing
in the midst of a great plain, and it made a perfect silhouette against
the gorgeous morning sunlight. Harley saw two slender figures outlined
there in front of the station building, and, despite the distance, he
knew them. There was to him something typically American and typically
Western in these two women coming alone into that vast emptiness and
waiting there in the utmost calmness, knowing that they were as safe as
if they were in the heart of a great city, and perhaps safer.

He knew, too, which was Sylvia; her manner, her bearing, the poise of
her figure, had become familiar to him. Slender and upright, she was in
harmony with the majesty of these great and silent spaces, but she did
not now seem bold and forward to him; she was clothed in a different
atmosphere altogether.

There was a warm greeting for Mr. Grayson a