We just located her last night. I have been looking, for her all
the time. You are going to talk to her for me."

"Oh, am I?"

"Yes. I was afraid to come alone for fear she would not see me. She will
not refuse to see you."

"Do you mind telling me what I am going to say to her?"

He was silent a while, thinking. "She refused to take any money from me,"
he said, presently. "And she has very little. If she persists in this,
she will have to work for her living. Miriam can not do that."

"No," said Eveley softly.

"She does not want me for a husband yet," he said humbly. "And that is
right. But I must have Miriam, and she shall never have any one else but
me--not that I think she would ever want anybody else. You are to tell
Miriam she must come home, and live her life just as she wishes and do as
she pleases in everything, and allow me to be a servant for her, to
provide what she wants and needs, to take care of her if she is sick.
Tell her she may have any friends she likes, lovers even if she wishes,
but that she must let me work for her."

Eveley laid her hand affectionately upon his arm. "I have never done you
justice, Lem; forgive me. I think Miriam will come home. I hope she
will."

"She has to. And after a while, when she sees in me what she used to
think was there, she will love me again. But in the meantime, I shall ask
nothing and expect nothing. But Miriam has got to be in the house."

Eveley only spoke once after that.

"If she will not come?"

He turned upon her then, a sudden grim smile lighting his face. "I know
what I shall do then," he said. "But you will think it is madness. If she
refuses to come, I shall make the necessary arrangements, and kidnap her.
She's got to come."

Eveley burst into quick laughter at the picture that came to her--a
picture of the old-time, immaculate Lem of the ballrooms, carrying his
wife away into the mountains to live a cave-man life.

He laughed with her, but the dead-set of his face remained. "It sounds
like a joke," he admitted. "But I have made up my mind. Miriam is mine,
and I am going to have her. We'll just go up into the mountains for a few
months, and she will see that I am cured."

Mile after mile they drove in silence up the steep mountain grades, and
after a long time he drew the car off beside the road under a cluster of
trees.

"That is the ranch, but I will not drive in. If she saw us coming she
would not talk to us, so you must catch her u