tly in love with him. And the
family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered. But
she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was
her way--a clean-cut sort of person--like a gold-and-white arrow; and
now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed
it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all have a quirk
somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined his career;
he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had kicked up the
devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and nasty enough, had
more or less hounded him out of the East. Of course, personally, I never
thought he showed any of the essentials of brilliancy, but that's
neither here nor there; she did, and she was satisfied that she owed him
all she had. I suppose, too, there was some trace of a Puritan
conscience back of it, some inherent feeling about divorce; and there
was pride as well, a desire not to let that disgusting family of hers
know into what ways her idol had fallen. Anyway, she was adamant--oh,
yes, I made no bones about it, I up and asked her one night why she
didn't get rid of the hound. So there she was, that white-and-gold
woman, with her love of music, and her love of books, and her love of
fine things, and her gentleness, and that sort of fiery, suppressed
Northern blood, shut up on top of an Arizona dump with a beast that got
drunk every night and twice a day on Sunday. It was worse even than
that. One night--we were sitting out on the veranda--her scarf slipped,
and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly
and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his
forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back in his
chair.

"Let me have another cigarette," he said to Jarrick. "No. Wait a minute!
I'll order some."

He called a waiter and gave his instructions. "You see," he continued,
"when you run across as few nice women as I do that sort of thing is
more than ordinarily disturbing. And then I suppose it was the setting,
and her loneliness, and everything. Anyway, I stayed on, I got to be
a little bit ashamed of myself. I was afraid that Mrs. Whitney would
think me prompted by mere curiosity or a desire to meddle, so after
a while I gave out that I was prospecting that part of Arizona, and
in the mornings I would take a horse and ride out into the desert. I
loved it, too; it was so big