"Never! I've been out a year and can nearly ride a cow pony, providing it
is lame and blind."

So, bantering each other unmercifully, they reached the front door.

"Wait a few minutes, Bud, and I will be out again. I must dress for
dinner."

When she had gone Larkin understood at once the presence of the carpet,
the patent rocker, and the piano.

"What a double-barreled idiot I am," he swore, "to talk turkey to old
Bissell and never connect him with Juliet. All the sheep in the world
couldn't get me away from here to-night." And he ejaculated the time-worn
but true old phrase that the world is a mighty small place.

Juliet Bissell had been a very definite personage in Bud Larkin's other
life--the life that he tried to forget. The eldest son of a rich Chicago
banker, his first twenty-five years had been such years as a man always
looks back upon with a vast regret.

From the mansion on Sheridan Drive he had varied his time among his clubs,
his sports, and his social duties, and generally made himself one of many
in this world that humanity can do without. In other words, he added
nothing to himself, others, or life in general, and was, therefore,
without a real excuse for existing.

Of one thing he was ever zealous, now that he had left it behind, and this
was that his past should not pursue him into the new life he had chosen.
He wished to start his career without stigma, and end it without blame.

Strangely enough, the person who had implanted this ambition and
determination in him was Juliet Bissell. Three winters before, he had met
her at the charity ball, and at the time she was something of a social
sensation, being described as "that cowgirl from Wyoming." However, that
"cowgirl" left her mark on many a gilded youth, and Bud Larkin was one.

He had fallen in love with her, as much as one in his position is capable
of falling in love, had proposed to her, and been rejected with a grace
and gentleness that had robbed the blow of all hurt--with one exception.
Bud's pride, since his wealth and position had meant nothing in the girl's
eyes, had been sorely wounded, and it had taken six months of the vast
mystery of the plains to reduce this pettiness to the status of a secret
shame.

When Juliet refused him she had told him with infinite tact that her
husband would be a man more after the pattern of her father, whom she
adored, and who, in turn, worshiped the very air that surrounded her; and
it was this