their cattle, their shining,
canal-like irrigation-ditches, their golden grain, their alfalfa, their
fruit and flowers. All this wealth and much more old Grizzly Gaylor had
given the pretty young singer in exchange for her beauty and the pleasure
of snatching her away from other men. Despite the "boss's" notorious
failings, it grated on Hilliard to hear Carmen rejoice aloud because her
husband was underground, and she was free of him now that his back was
turned forever.

"Probably you're right," Nick said. "Yet--it kind of rubs me up the wrong
way to listen to you talkin' like that, in particular just this very
night."

"Why in particular this very night?" she asked sharply.

"Well--I guess it's only conventional, because, why are twelve months more
important than fourteen or any other number? But it's the feeling of an
anniversary, I suppose. A year ago to-day he breathed his last--and he
didn't want to die. It sort of seems as if to-day ought to be sacred to
him, no matter what he was. And--maybe I'm a dashed hypocrite and don't
know it, but it doesn't suit my ideas of you to get the feeling that you
set up to-night as festival. I expect I'm wrong, though, and you ought to
be lecturin' me instead of me you."

"I don't want to lecture you, Nick, whether you understand me or not,"
said Carmen. But the dinner and the meaning of the feast were spoilt for
her in an instant. She could have bitten her tongue out because it had
spoken the wrong words--words which jarred on Nick at the very moment when
she most wished to charm him. She knew, with a heavy weight of
premonition, that this moonlight talk she had planned would give her
nothing worth having now. To try to make Nick feel her power would do more
harm than good, because the night had suddenly become haunted by the
spirit of the dead man. "I'm punished," she thought, superstitiously. But
she exerted herself to be cheerful, lest Nick should go East disgusted
with her. And that would be the end of all.

IV

A GIRL IN MOURNING

Angela May sat in her chair on the promenade-deck of the _Adriatic_ and
felt peacefully conscious that she was resting body and brain.

The ship was not crowded, for it was spring, and the great tide of travel
had turned in the opposite direction--toward Europe. On either side of her
chair were several which were unoccupied, and a soothing silence hovered
round her, through which she could listen to the whisper of the sea as the