“I told him a thousand reasons why; I recounted them cruelly, unfeelingly, but he made no sign.  As a matter of fact, I don’t think he understood them any more than he understood the affair itself.  He appeared to be blinded, confused by the splendor of what had come to him.  Alicia was so glorious, so different, so mysterious to him, that he had lost all sense of perspective and of proportion.  Recognizing this, I descended to material things which I knew he could grasp.

“‘I paid for your education,’ said I, ’and it is almost over with.  In a few months you’ll be turned out to make your own living, and then you’ll encounter this race prejudice I speak of in a way to effect your stomach and your body.  You’re a poor man, Running Elk, and you’ve got to earn your way.  Your blood will bar you from a good many means of doing it, and when your color begins to affect your earning capacity you’ll have all you can do to take care of yourself.  Life isn’t played on a gridiron, and the first thing you’ve got to do is to make a man of yourself.  You’ve got no right to fill your head with dreams, with insane fancies of this sort.’

“‘Yes, sir!’ said he, and that was about all I could get out of him.  His reticence was very annoying.

“I didn’t see him again, for I came West the next day, and the weeks stretched into months without word of him or of the others.

“Shortly before he was due to return I was taken sick—­the one big illness of my life, which came near ending me, which made me into the creaking old ruin that I am.  They sent me away to another climate, where I got worse, then they shifted me about like a bale of goods, airing me here and there.  For a year and a half I hung over the edge, one ailment running into another, but finally I straightened out a bit and tottered back into Washington to resume operations.

“For six months I hung around headquarters, busied on department matters.  I had lost all track of things out here, meanwhile, for the agent had been changed shortly after I left, and no one had taken the trouble to keep me posted; but eventually I showed up on the reservation again, reaching here on the first of July, three days before the annual celebration of the people.

“Many changes had occurred in my two years’ absence, and there was no one to bring me gossip, hence I heard little during the first day or two while I was picking up the loose ends of my work.  One thing I did find out, however—­namely, that Running Elk had come straight home from college, and was still on the reserve.  I determined to look him up during the festival.

“But on the morning of the Fourth I got the surprise of my life.  The stage from the railroad brought two women, two strange women, who came straight to my office—­Alicia Harman and her French maid.

“Well, I was fairly knocked endwise; but Alicia was as well-poised and as self-contained as on that Thanksgiving morning in New York when she and old Henry had picked me up in their automobile—­a trifle more stunning and a bit more determined, perhaps.  Oh, she was a splendid creature in the first glory of her womanhood, a perfectly groomed and an utterly spoiled young goddess.  She greeted me graciously, with that queenly air of all great ladies.