“Jonas, you want to see the great Navajo charm, made by Navajo god when he made these waterholes?”

Jonas pricked up his ears.  “Is it a good charm or a hoo-doo?”

“If you come at it right, it means you never die,” Na-che nodded her head solemnly.

Jonas put a cat’s claw root on the fire.  “All right!  You see, woman, that I come at it right.”

Na-che smiled and led the way eastward.

“Bless them!” exclaimed Enoch.  “They’re doing the very best they can for us!”

“And they’re having a beautiful time with each other,” added Diana.  “I think Jonas loves you as much as Na-che loves me.”

“I don’t deserve that much love,” said Enoch, watching the fire glow on Diana’s face.  “But he is the truest friend I have on earth.”

Diana gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance.

“Ah, but you don’t know me, as Jonas does!  I wouldn’t want you to know me as he does!” exclaimed Enoch.

“I’ll not admit either Lucy or Jonas as serious rivals,” protested Diana.

Enoch laughed.  “Dearest, I have told you things that Jonas would not dream existed.  I have poured out my heart to you, night after night.  All a boy’s aching dreams, all a man’s hopes and fears, I’ve shared with you.  Jonas was not that kind of friend.  I first met him when I became secretary to the Mayor of New York.  He was a sort of porter or doorman at the City Hall.  He gradually began to do little personal things for me and before I realized just how it was accomplished, he became my valet and steward, and was keeping house for me in a little flat up on Fourth Avenue.

“And then, when I was still in the City Hall I had a row with Luigi.  He spoke of my mother to a group of officials I was taking through Minetta Lane.

“Diana, it was Luigi who taught me to gamble when I was not over eight years old.  I took to it with devilish skill.  What drink or dope or women have been to other men, gambling has been to me.  After I came back from the Grand Canyon with John Seaton, I began to fight against it.  But, although I waited on table for my board, I really put myself through the High School on my earnings at craps and draw poker.  As I grew older I ceased to gamble as a means of subsistence but whenever I was overtaxed mentally I was drawn irresistibly to a gambling den.  And so after the fight with Luigi—­”

Enoch paused, his face knotted.  His strong hands, clasping his knees as he sat in the sand, opposite Diana, were tense and hard.  Diana, looking at him thought of what this man meant to the nation, of what his service had been and would be:  she thought of the great gifts with which nature had endowed him and she could not bear to have him humble himself to her.

She sprang to her feet.  “Enoch!  Enoch!” she cried.  “Don’t tell me any more!  You are entitled to your personal weaknesses.  Even I must not intrude!  I asked you about them because, oh, because, Enoch, you are letting your only real weakness come between you and me.”