r and
lifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remote
analogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen.
"What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?"

She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenly
wind-blown.

"God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm.
"Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?"

But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, and
the following morning there they were, the eight of them, light with
laughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, off
for a day's motoring through the springtime countryside.

"Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat in
the first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind.

"I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last of
the cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil.

"Crystal Cave it is, then."

"Is that through Demopolis?"

Followed a scanning of maps.

"Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. Crystal
Cave."

"Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?"

"It's my home town," she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had is
buried there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-house
steps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get there
ever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town you
haven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?"

He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her.

She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually found
irresistible.

"Honey," she said, "what do you think?"

"What?"

"Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom's
window the day before we left."

"The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediately
covering his.

"She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it for
her."

"Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at the
beautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look at
those hills over there! Great--isn't it?"

"I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landing
one big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself in
that chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I could
telegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hate
it, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat u