"There's something of him about you," she said, and her forehead
gathered. "There's some look! Well, there it is, but it's something--I
don't know what."

A moment later she was gone. As the door closed, he stretched his hands
above his head.

"Nom de Dieu, what a situation!" he remarked.

CHAPTER XX. JUNIA AND TARBOE HEAR THE NEWS

To most people Carnac's candidature was a surprise; to some it was a
bewilderment, and to one or two it was a shock. To the second class
belonged Fabian Grier and his wife; to the third class belonged Luke
Tarboe. Only one person seemed to understand it--by intuition: Junia.

Somehow, nothing Carnac did changed Junia's views of him, or surprised
her, though he made her indignant often enough. To her mind, however,
in the big things, his actions always had reasonableness. She had
never felt his artist-life was to be the only note of his career. When,
therefore, in the West she read a telegram in a newspaper announcing his
candidature, she guessed the suddenness of his decision. When she read
it, she spread the paper on the table, smoothed it as though it were
a beautiful piece of linen, then she stretched out her hands in happy
benediction. Like most of her sex, she loved the thrill of warfare.
There flashed the feeling, however, that it would be finer sport if
Carnac and Tarboe were to be at war, instead of Carnac and Barouche. It
was curious she never thought of Carnac but the other man came throbbing
into sight--the millionaire, for he was that now.

In one way, this last move of Carnac's had the elements of a
master-stroke. She knew how strange it would seem to the rest of the
world, yet it did not seem strange to her. No man she had ever seen had
been so at home in the world of men, and also at home in the secluded
field of the chisel and the brush as Carnac.

She took the newspaper over to her aunt, holding it up. The big
headlines showed like semaphores on the page. As the graceful figure
of Junia drew to her aunt--her slim feet, in the brown, well-polished
boots, the long, full neck, and then the chin, Grecian, shapely and
firm, the straight, sensitive nose, the wonderful eyes under the
well-cut, broad forehead, with the brown hair, covering it like a
canopy--the old lady reached out and wound her arms round the lissome
figure. Situated so, she read the telegram, and then the old arms
gripped her tighter.

Presently, the whistle of a train sounded. The aunt stretched ou