Sheila turned her chin, pointed above the fur collar of her coat, and included him in the searching and astonished wideness of her look.

“You work at The Aura, don’t you?” she asked with childlike brusquerie.

Dickie’s sensitive, undecided mouth settled into mournfulness.  He looked away.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said plaintively.

Sheila’s widened eyes, still fixed upon him, began to embarrass him.  A flush came up into his face.

She moved her look across him and away to the range.

“It is like that,” she said—­“like a cold flame, going up—­how did you think of that?”

Dickie looked quickly, gratefully at her.  “I kind of felt,” he said lamely, “that I had got to find out what it was like.  But”—­he shook his head with his deprecatory smile—­“but that don’t tell it, Miss Arundel.  It’s more than that.”  He smiled again.  “I bet you, you could think of somethin’ better to say about it, couldn’t you?”

Sheila laughed.  “What a funny boy you are!  Not like the others.  You don’t even look like them.  How old are you?  When I first saw you I thought you were quite grown up.  But you can’t be much more than nineteen.”

“Just that,” he said, “but I’ll be twenty next month.”

“You’ve always lived here in Millings?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Do you like it?  I mean, do you like Millings?  I hope you do.”

Sheila pressed her muff against her mouth and looked at him over it.  Her eyes were shining as though the moonlight had got into their misty grayness.  She shook her head; then, as his face fell, she began to apologize.

“Your father has been so awfully kind to me.  I am so grateful.  And the girls are awfully good to me.  But, Millings, you know?—­I wouldn’t have told you,” she said half-angrily, “if I hadn’t been so sure you hated it.”

They had come to the edge of the mesa, and there below shone the small, scattered lights of the town.  The graphophone was playing in the saloon.  Its music—­some raucous, comic song—­insulted the night.

“Why, no,” said Dickie, “I don’t hate Millings.  I never thought about it that way.  It’s not such a bad place.  Honest, it isn’t.  There’s lots of fine folks in it.  Have you met Jim Greely?”

“Why, no, but I’ve seen him.  Isn’t that Girlie’s—­’fellow’?”

Dickie made round, respectful eyes.  He was evidently very much impressed.

“Say!” he ejaculated.  “Is that the truth?  Girlie’s aiming kind of high.”

It was not easy to walk side by side on the rutted snow of the road.  Sheila here slipped ahead of him and went on quickly along the middle rut where the horses’ hoofs had beaten a pitted path.

She looked back at him over her shoulder with a sort of malice.

“Is it aiming high?” she said.  “Girlie is much more beautiful than Jim Greely.”

“Oh, but he’s some looker—­Jim.”