ley's life?" his rival asked with
quiet impudence.

In the course of the past two days Aline had made the discovery that
her husband and her rescuer were at swords drawn in a business way.
This had greatly distressed her, and in her innocence she had resolved
to bring them together. How could her inexperience know that she might
as well have tried to induce the lion and the lamb to lie down together
peaceably? Now she tried timidly to drift the conversation from the
awkwardness into which Harley's suggestion of a reward and his
opponent's curt retort had blundered it.

"I hope you did not find upon your return that your business was
disarranged so much as you feared it might be by your absence."

"I found my affairs in very good condition," Ridgway smiled. "But I am
glad to be back in time to welcome to Mesa you--and Mr. Harley."

"It seems so strange a place," the girl ventured, with a hesitation
that showed her anxiety not to offend his local pride. "You see I never
before was in a place where there was no grass and nothing green in
sight. And to-night, when I looked out of the window and saw streams of
red-hot fire running down hills, I thought of Paradise Lost and Dante.
I suppose it doesn't seem at all uncanny to you?"

"At night sometimes I still get that feeling, but I have to cultivate
it a bit," he confessed. "My sober second thought insists that those
molten rivers are merely business, refuse disgorged as lava from the
great smelters."

"I looked for the sun to-day through the pall of sulphur smoke that
hangs so heavy over the town, but instead I saw a London gas-lamp
hanging in the heavens. Is it always so bad?"

"Not when the drift of the wind is right. In fact, a day like this is
quite unusual."

"I'm glad of that. I feel more cheerful in the sunshine. I know that's
a bit of the child still left in me. Mr. Harley takes all days alike."

The Wall Street operator was in slippers and house-jacket. His wife,
too, was dressed comfortably in some soft clinging stuff. Their visitor
saw that they had disposed themselves for a quiet uninterrupted evening
by the fireside. The domesticity of it all stirred the envy in him. He
did not want her to be contented and at peace with his enemy. Something
deeper than his vanity cried out in protest against it.

She was still making talk against the gloom of the sulphur fog which
seemed to have crept into the spirit of the room.

"We were reading before you came in