ay there sleepless and full of remorse. His mind was like
a racecourse with many races; and predominating in it was that swift,
strange, stinging race of his memory of Lucy Bostil's looks and actions.

What an utter fool he was to believe she had meant those tender words
when, out there under the looming monuments, she had accepted Wildfire!
She had been an impulsive child. Her scorn and fury that morning of the
race had left nothing for him except footless fancies. She had mistaken
love of Wildfire for love of him. No, his case was hopeless with Lucy,
and if it had not been so Bostil would have made it hopeless. Yet there
were things Slone could not fathom--the wilful, contradictory, proud
and cold and unaccountably sweet looks and actions of the girl. They
haunted Slone. They made him conscious he had a mind and tortured him
with his development. But he had no experience with girls to compare
with what was happening now. It seemed that accepted fact and
remembered scorn and cold certainty were somehow at variance with
hitherto unknown intuitions and instincts. Lucy avoided him, if by
chance she encountered him alone. When Bostil or Aunt Jane or any one
else was present Lucy was kind, pleasant, agreeable. What made her
flush red at sight of him and then, pale? Why did she often at table or
in the big living-room softly brush against him when it seemed she
could have avoided that? Many times he had felt some inconceivable
drawing power, and looked up to find her eyes upon him, strange eyes
full of mystery, that were suddenly averted. Was there any meaning
attachable to the fact that his room was kept so tidy and neat, that
every day something was added to its comfort or color, that he found
fresh flowers whenever he returned, or a book, or fruit, or a dainty
morsel to eat, and once a bunch of Indian paint-brush, wild flowers of
the desert that Lucy knew he loved? Most of all, it was Lucy's eyes
which haunted Slone--eyes that had changed, darkened, lost their
audacious flash, and yet seemed all the sweeter. The glances he caught,
which he fancied were stolen--and then derided his fancy--thrilled him
to his heart. Thus Slone had spent waking hours by day and night, mad
with love and remorse, tormented one hour by imagined grounds for hope
and resigned to despair the next.

Upon the sixth morning of his stay at Bostil's Slone rose with
something of his former will reasserting itself. He could not remain in
Bostil's home a