Dick’s enthusiasm was contagious, and his earnest desire to learn was flattering to his teachers.  When it came to assimilating Spanish, however, he did not appear to be so apt a pupil.  He managed, after many trials, to acquire “buenos dias” and “buenos tardes,” and “senorita” and “gracias,” and a few other short terms.  Dick was indeed eager to get a little smattering of Spanish, and perhaps he was not really quite so stupid as he pretended to be.  It was delightful to be taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so gracious and intense and magnetic of personality, and by a sweet American girl who moment by moment forgot her shyness.  Gale wished to prolong the lessons.

So that was the beginning of many afternoons in which he learned desert lore and Spanish verbs, and something else that he dared not name.

Nell Burton had never shown to Gale that daring side of her character which had been so suggestively defined in Belding’s terse description and Ladd’s encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting.  She might have been an entirely different girl.  But Gale remembered; and when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was always trying to surprise her into her real self.  There were moments that fairly made him tingle with expectation.  Yet he saw little more than a ghost of her vivacity, and never a gleam of that individuality which Belding had called a devil.  On the few occasions that Dick had been left alone with her in the patio Nell had grown suddenly unresponsive and restrained, or she had left him on some transparent pretext.  On the last occasion Mercedes returned to find Dick staring disconsolately at the rose-bordered path, where Nell had evidently vanished.  The Spanish girl was wonderful in her divination.

“Senor Dick!” she cried.

Dick looked at her, soberly nodded his head, and then he laughed.  Mercedes had seen through him in one swift glance.  Her white hand touched his in wordless sympathy and thrilled him.  This Spanish girl was all fire and passion and love.  She understood him, she was his friend, she pledged him what he felt would be the most subtle and powerful influence.

Little by little he learned details of Nell’s varied life.  She had lived in many places.  As a child she remembered moving from town to town, of going to school among schoolmates whom she never had time to know.  Lawrence, Kansas, where she studied for several years, was the later exception to this changeful nature of her schooling.  Then she moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, from there to Austin, Texas, and on to Waco, where her mother met and married Belding.  They lived in New Mexico awhile, in Tucson, Arizona, in Douglas, and finally had come to lonely Forlorn River.