He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of “the suite” as though he felt weak.  Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the saloon whose high priestess she had become.  And Dickie had listened with the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the prattle of a beloved child.

“You honest think all that, Sheila?” he had asked her patiently.

She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry at his look.  This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend!

“Say,” Dickie had drawled, “Poppa’s some guardian!” He had advanced upon her as though he wanted to shake her.  “You gotta give it right up, Sheila,” he had said sternly.  “Sooner than immediately.  It’s not to go through.  Say, girl, you don’t know much about bars.”  He had drawn a picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him.  He used words that bit into her memory.  Sheila had listened and then she had put her hands over her ears.  He pulled them down.  He went on.  Sheila’s Irish blood had boiled up into her brain.  She stormed back at him.

“It’s you, it’s your use of The Aura that has been its only shame, Dickie,” was the last of all the things she had said.

At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, “If you go there and stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I—­I swear I’ll never set foot inside the place again.  You ain’t agoin’ to be my beacon light—­”

“Well, then,” said Sheila, “I shall have done one good thing at least by being there.”

Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in.  The two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears.

* * * * *

The motor hummed evenly on its way.  It began, with a change of tune, to climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas.  Sheila, having lived through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and busied herself with it under her veil.  She laughed shakily.

“Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by attracting them,” she said.  “Dickie has certainly kept his word.  I don’t believe he’s touched a drop since I’ve been barmaid, Mr. Hudson.  I should think you’d be proud of him.”

Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill.  He changed gears and sounded his horn.  They passed another motor on a dangerous curve.  They began to drop down again.

“Some day,” said Sylvester in a quiet voice, “I’ll break every bone in Dickie’s body.”  He murmured something more under his breath in too low a tone, fortunately, for Sheila’s ear.  From her position behind the bar, she had become used to swearing.  She had heard a strange variety of language.  But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the artist in him was at work.