ally
such dreary-looking frumps I'd hate to be in the same book with them.
Besides, most of the presidents don't amount to much. Truthful George
must have been a deadly bore. I prefer Benjamin Franklin--although I
never could stand that nose--or Clay or Calhoun or Patrick Henry or
Webster. They're dead, but there must be lots more. I'll find one for
you, too."

Again the dark flush mounted to Magdalena's hair, as with an alertness
of motion unusual to her, she shook her head.

"Aha!" cried the astute Helena, "you've been thinking the matter over,
too, have you? Who is he? Tell me."

Magdalena shook her head again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced
and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was
reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was
great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I
know!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "It's a caballero!"

This time Magdalena's face turned almost purple; but she had neither her
sex's quick instinct of self-protection nor its proneness to dissemble,
secretive as she was. She lifted her head haughtily and turned away. For
a moment she looked very Spanish, not the unfortunate result of coupled
races that she was. Helena, who was in her naughtiest humour, threw back
her head and laughed scornfully. "A caballero!" she cried: "who will
serenade you at two o'clock in the morning when you are dying with
sleep, and lie in a hammock smoking cigaritos all day; who will roll out
rhetoric by the yard, and look like an idiot when you talk common-sense
to him; who is too lazy to walk across the plaza, and too proud to work,
and too silly to keep the Americans from grabbing all he's got. I met a
few dilapidated specimens when I was in Los Angeles last year. One
beauty with long hair, a sombrero, and a head about as big as my fist,
used to serenade me in intervals of gambling until I appealed to Jack,
and he threatened to have him put in the calaboose if he didn't let me
alone--"

Magdalena turned upon her. Her face was livid. Her eyes stared as if she
had seen the dead walking. "Hush!" she said. "You--you cruel--you have
everything--"

Helena, whose intuitions never failed her, when she chose to exercise
them, knew what she had done, caught a flashing glimpse of the shattered
dreams of the girl who said so little, whose only happiness was in the
ideal world she had built in the jealously guarded depths of her soul.
"Oh,