d something about you which is very painful," she said one
day as they sat together beside the chalybeate spring. The crag, all
discolored in rust-red streaks by the dripping of the mineral water
through its interstices, towered above their heads; the ferns, exquisite
and of subtle fragrance, tufted the niches; the trees were close about
them, and below, on the precipitous slope; sometimes the lush green
boughs parted, revealing a distant landscape of azure ranges, far
stretching against a sky as blue, and in the valley of the foreground
long bars of golden hue, where fields, denuded of the harvested wheat,
took the sun. Girard lounged, languid, taciturn, and quiescent as ever,
on the opposite side of the circular rock basin wherein the clear water
fell.

"I will tell you what it is," Alicia went on, after a pause, for, though
he looked attentive, he gave not even a glance of question. "I hear that
you gamble."

His gaze concentrated as he knitted his brows, but he said nothing.

She pulled her broad straw hat forward on her auburn hair and readjusted
the flounces of her white morning dress, saying while thus engaged,
"Yes, indeed; that you gamble--like--like fury!"

"Why, don't you know that's against the law?" he demanded unexpectedly.

"I know that it is very wrong and sinful," she said solemnly.

"Thanky. I'll put that in my pipe an' smoke it! I'm very wrong and
sinful, I am given to understand."

"Why, I didn't mean _you_ so much," she faltered, perturbed by this
sudden charge of the enemy. "I meant the practice."

"Oh, I know that I'm a sinner in more ways 'n one; but I _didn't_ know
that you were a lady-preacher."

"You mean that it is none of my business----"

"You ought to be so glad of that," he retorted.

She maintained a silence that might have suggested a degree of offended
pride, and she was truly humiliated that her vaunted hazel eyes had
so signally failed to work their wonted charm. As they strolled back
together up the steep path to the hotel he seemed either unobservant
or uncaring, so impassive were his manners, and she was aware that her
demonstration had resulted in giving him information which he could
not otherwise have gained. Later, she was nettled to notice that he had
utilized it in prosaic fashion, for that night no lights flared late
from the casino.

The gamesters, informed that rumors were a-wing, had betaken themselves
elsewhere. A small smoking-room in the hotel proper see