There was no romance, nothing like adventure here nowadays, said Helen May to herself, while she watched the little geysers of dust go dancing like whirling dervishes across the sand.  A person lived on canned stuff and kept goats and was abjectly pleased to see any kind of human being.  There certainly was no romance left in the country, though it had seemed almost as though there might be, when her Man of the Desert sang and all the little night-sounds hushed to listen, and the moon-trail across the sand of the desert lay like a ribbon of silver.  It had seemed then as though there might be romance yet alive in the wide spaces.

So she had swung back again to Starr, just as she was always doing lately.  She began to wonder when he would come again, and what he would have to say next time, and whether he had really annexed some poor sheep man’s perfectly good dog, just because he knew she needed one.  It would never do to let on that she guessed; but all the same, it was mighty nice of him to think of her, even if he did go about it in a queer way.  And when Pat, who had seemed to be asleep, lifted his head and looked up into her eyes adoringly, Helen May laid her hand upon his smooth skull and smiled oddly.

No more romance, said Helen May—­and here was Starr, a man of mystery, a man feared and distrusted by the sons of those passionate dons of whom she dreamed!  Here was Starr, Secret Service man (there is ever a glamor in the very name of it), the very essence and forefront of such romance and such adventure as she had gasped over, when she had seen it pictured on the screen!  She was living right in the middle of intrigue that was stirring the rulers of two nations; she was coming close to real adventure, and there she sat, with Pat lying on the hem of her skirt, and mourned that she was fifty or a hundred years too late for even a glimpse at romance!  And fretted because she was helping Pat herd goats, and because life was dull and commonplace.

“Honestly,” she told Pat, “I’ve got to the point where I catch myself, looking forward to the chance visits of a wandering cowboy who is perfectly commonplace.  Why, he’d be absolutely lost on the screen; you wouldn’t know he was in the picture unless his horse bucked or fell down or something!  And I don’t suppose he ever has a thought beyond his work and his little five-cent celebrations in San Bonito, maybe.  Most likely he flirts with those grimy-necked Mexican girls, too.  You can’t tell—­

“And think of me being so hard up for excitement that I’ve got to play he’s some mysterious creature of the desert!  Honest to goodness, Pat, it’s got so bad that the mere sight of a real, live man is thrilling.  When Holman Sommers comes and lifts that old Panama like a crown prince, and smiles at me and talks about all the different periods of the human race, and gems and tribal laws and all that highbrow dope, I just sit and drink it in and wish he’d keep on for hours!  Can you beat that?  And if by any chance a common, ordinary specimen of desert man should ride by, I might be desperate enough—­”