is what he shapes it for himself."

"A stupid, bare-faced, platitudinous lie!"

Steve Packard, grown irritable here of late, flung the offending book
through an open window and got to his feet.

"A man's life is what the evil little gods of chance make it, curse
them. Or what a fool of a girl tangles and twists it into."

He shook himself viciously and went to his door, staring out across the
hills vaguely moulded under the stars.

Life was just a very unsatisfactory sort of a proposition. It was a
game that wasn't worth the players' serious attention, a game all of
chance and not in the least of skill, and not even interesting! So, in
the sombre depths of his soul Steve Packard admitted freely. And,
until a certain night only some six months ago, he had never divined
this great truth.

That night Blenham had sneered, "Stuck on her yourself, are you?" and
Steve had recognized a vital fact inelegantly expressed; that night
Terry Temple had appeared to him more than just a "good little sport";
that night he had somewhat brusquely considered the sweet femininity of
her under her assumed surface of _diablerie_ and had found her
infinitely desirable; that same night Terry, for no reason in the world
that Steve Packard could discover, had suddenly congealed into a thing
of ice that had never since thawed save only briefly before burning
fits of wrath.

Two hours after he had admitted to himself that he loved her she
informed him with all of the emphasis she could summon for the occasion
that she hated him. And life hadn't been what he had made it at all.

The papers which Temple had signed were still in existence, safely
deposited in a bank in San Juan. Steve had paid off the Temple
mortgage to his grandfather; he had paid Temple a thousand dollars in
cash; thereby he had acquired a half interest in the Temple ranch.
That had all been quite in accordance with Terry's suggestions and
entirely satisfactory.

Not being a thief, Steve counted upon relinquishing his right to his
half at any time that Temple paid back just what had been advanced.
But it became evident very soon that Temple would never pay back
anything. Though Doctor Bridges found nothing very much the matter
with him, nevertheless Temple died less than two weeks later.

During those two weeks Steve had not seen Terry. With word of the
girl's bereavement, however, he had gone immediately to her. She
looked at him curiously, saying quietly that