Galloway smiled down at her.

“If I held back every time a danger-signal was thrown out,” he said lightly, “I wouldn’t travel very far.  Oh, I’ll come back all right; a man may go through fire itself and return if he has the incentive which I have.”  His tone altered subtly.  Florrie started.

“But before I go,” went on Galloway, “I am going to tell you something which I think you know already.  You do, don’t you, Florence?”

She would not have been Florrie at all, but some very different, unromantic, and unimaginative creature, had she failed of comprehension.  Jim Galloway was actually making love to her!

“What do you mean, Mr. Galloway?” she managed to stammer.

“I mean that what I am telling you is for your ears alone.  I am placing a confidence in you, the greatest confidence a man can place in a girl.  Or in a woman, Florence.  I am trusting that what I say will remain just between you and me for the present. . . .  When I come back I will be no longer just Jim Galloway of the Casa Blanca, but Galloway of one of the biggest grants in Mexico, with mile after mile of fertile lands, with a small army of servants, vaqueros, and retainers, a sort of ruler of my own State!  It sounds like a fairy-tale, Florence, but it is the sober truth made possible by conditions below the border.  My estates will run down to the blue water of the Gulf; I shall have my own fleet of ocean-going yachts; there is a port upon my own land.  There will be a home overlooking the sea like a king’s palace.  Will you think of all that while I am gone?  Will you think of me a little, too?  Will you remember that my little kingdom is crying out for its queen? . . .  No; I am not asking you to answer me now.  I am just asking that you hold this as our secret until I come back.  Until I come back for you! . . .  I shall stand here until you reach your home,” he broke off suddenly.  “Good night, my dear.”

“Good night,” said Florence faintly, a little dazed by all that he had said to her.  Then, running through the shadows to her home, she was thinking of the boy who had wished to propose to her and of the man who had done so; of Elmer’s little home upon the knoll surrounded by a cow, a horse, and some pigs . . . and of a big house like a palace looking out to sea across the swaying masts of white-sailed, sea-going yachts!

CHAPTER XXI

A CRISIS

Like Norton, Virginia found life simplifying itself in a crisis.  Upon three hundred and sixty days or more of the average year each individual has before him scores of avenues open to his thoughts or to his act; he may turn wheresoever he will.  But in the supreme moments of his life, with brief time for hesitation granted him, he may be forced to do one of two things:  he must leap back or plunge forward to escape the destiny rushing down upon him like a speeding engine threatening him who has come to stand