nourishment, he found himself unequal to the task.  Behind every consoling thought stalked that totally incredible “No.”  He tortured his brain for possible reasons for Hortense’s deflection, but could find none.  Detail by detail he reviewed their acquaintance from the first time he had bowed over her fingers, in Lord Carlton’s hunting-lodge, to the moment he had touched his lips to the same fingers in formal farewell on the terrace at Hascombe Hall.  It had been such a well-bred courtship from the start, so thoroughly approved by both sides, so perfectly conducted throughout!

Then, following suddenly on this smooth course of events, came a series of bumps that made Percival wince as he recalled them:  protests, evasions, humiliating questions on the part of the public, and then ignominious flight.  He shuddered as he thought of the dull, wet days on the Atlantic and his hideous week in America.  He had been in a perpetual state of protest against everything from the hotel service to what he termed the “crass vulgarity of the States.”

There had been but one oasis in the desert of gloom through which he had traveled, and that had been on his interminable trip across the continent, when for ten brief minutes his blight had been lifted, and he had caught a breath of the incense for which his soul hungered.

It was at a little station in Wyoming that he, a convalescent from love, had for the first time in weeks managed to look up and take a bit of amatory nourishment.  He was standing alone on the rear platform of the observation-car, arms on railing, watching with no interest whatever the taking off of mail-bags.  Suddenly within his line of vision came a stalwart young chap and a girl, each astride a bronco.  They drew rein at the platform, cursorily scanned the waiting train, glanced at him, then at each other, and, apparently without the slightest reason, burst into unrestrained merriment.  Percival continued to survey them calmly and haughtily through his monocle.  His first glance had revealed the fact that the girl was strikingly pretty.  Her lithe young body showed round and comely in its khaki suit and brown leggings.  Her black mane was braided in two short, thick plaits with a dash of scarlet ribbons at the ends.  Blue eyes, full of daring, danced under the blackest of brows, and the smile she flashed at her companion revealed a dimple of distracting proportions.

As Percival gazed he was quite oblivious of the fact that the laugh was at his expense.  In fact, he accorded her darting glances a far more flattering interpretation, and when her escort dismounted, and disappeared within the station, he deliberately caught her eye and held it.  There was a touch of daring in her face and figure, an evident sense of security in the fact that the train was already beginning to move.  He shifted his position from the end of the platform to the side next the station, and she met the challenge by gathering up her reins and keeping pace with the slow-moving train.