nd it, she could not be sure which; she had an uneasy feeling
sometimes that he looked upon Granville doings and Granville folk with
amused tolerance, not unmixed with contempt. But he attracted
attention. Whenever he was minded to talk he found ready listeners.
And he did not seem to mind being dragged to various functions,
matinees, and the like. He fell naturally into that mode of existence,
no matter that it was in profound contrast to his previous manner of
life, as she knew it. She felt a huge satisfaction in that. Anything
but a well-bred man would have repelled her, and she had recognized
that quality in Bill Wagstaff even when he had carried her bodily into
the wilderness against her explicit desire that memorable time. And he
was now exhibiting an unsuspected polish. She used to wonder amusedly
if he were possibly the same Roaring Bill whom she had with her eyes
seen hammer a man insensible with his fists, who had kept "tough"
frontiersmen warily side-stepping him in Cariboo Meadows. Certainly he
was a many-sided individual.

Once or twice she conjured up a vision of his getting into some
business there, and utterly foregoing the North--which for her was
already beginning to take on the aspect of a bleak and cheerless region
where there was none of the things which daily whetted her appetite for
luxury, nothing but hardships innumerable--and gold. The gold had been
their reward--a reward well earned, she thought. Still--they had been
wonderfully happy there at the Pine River cabin, she remembered.

They came home from a theater party late one night. Bill sat down by
their bedroom window, and stared out at the street lights, twin rows of
yellow beads stretching away to a vanishing point in the pitch-black of
a cloudy night. Hazel kicked off her slippers, and gratefully toasted
her silk-stockinged feet at a small coal grate. Fall had come, and
there was a sharp nip to the air.

"Well, what do you think of it as far as you've gone?" he asked
abruptly.

"Of what?" she asked, jarred out of meditation upon the play they had
just witnessed.

"All this." He waved a hand comprehensively. "This giddy swim we've
got into."

"I think it's fine," she candidly admitted. "I'm enjoying myself. I
like it. Don't you?"

"As a diversion," he observed thoughtfully, "I don't mind it. These
people are all very affable and pleasant, and they've rather gone out
of their way to entertain us. But, after all,