up detail after detail of that journey. Now he
saw the real impulse that had led her to board the eastbound train in
Snoqualmie Pass. She had recognized him, conjectured he was on his way to
find that tract of Weatherbee's; and she had determined to go over the
land with him, cajole him into putting the highest estimate possible on
the property. Even now, there in the sleeper, she was congratulating
herself no doubt on the success of her scheme.

At the thought of the ease with which he had allowed himself to be
ensnared, his muscles tightened. It was as though the iron in the man took
shape, shook off the veneer, encased him like a coat of mail. Hitherto, in
those remote Alaska solitudes, this would have meant the calling to
account of some transgressor in his camp. He began to sift for the prime
element in this woman's wonderful personality. It was not physical beauty
alone; neither was it that mysterious magnetism, almost electrical, yet
delicately responsive as a stringed instrument. One of these might have
kept that tremendous hold on Weatherbee near, but on Weatherbee absent
through those long, breaking years, hardly. It was something deeper;
something elusive yet insistent that had made it easier for him to brave
out his defeat alone in the Alaska wilderness than come back to face.
Clearly she was not just the handsome animal he had believed her to be.
Had she not called herself proud? Had he not seen her courage? She had a
spirit to break. A soul!

CHAPTER XIII

"A LITTLE STREAK OF LUCK"

It was not the first time Jimmie Daniels had entertained the Society
Editor at the Rathskeller, and that Monday, though he had invited her to
lunch with him in the Venetian room, she asked him, as was her habit, to
"order for both."

"Isn't there something special you'd like?" he asked generously;
"something you haven't had for a long time?"

"No. You are so much of an epicure--for a literary person--I know it's
sure to be something nice. Besides," and the shadow of a smile drifted
across her face, "it saves me guessing the state of your finances."

A critic would have called Geraldine Atkins too slender for her height,
and her face, notwithstanding its girlish freshness, hardly pretty. The
chin, in spite of its dimple, was too strong; the lips, scarlet as a holly
berry, lacked fullness and had a trick of closing firmly over her white
teeth. Even her gray-blue eyes, which should have been a dreamer's, had
acqui