why his rather flushed face should be
turned toward me every now and then.

My heart beat a little faster as I saw him take out his watch and wind
it up.

"Let's go to bed," he said as he pushed it back in his waistcoat
pocket. My heart stopped beating altogether, for a moment or two. I
felt like a slave-girl in a sheik's tent, like a desert-woman just
sold into bondage.

It was the smoky air and the highballs, I suppose, which left his eyes
a little bloodshot as he turned slowly about and studied my face. Then
he repeated what he had said before.

"_I can't!_" I told him, with a foolish surge of terror.

He sat quite a long time without speaking. I could see the corners of
the Holbein-Astronomer mouth go down.

"As you say," he finally remarked, with a grim sort of quietness. But
every bit of color had gone from his face. I was glad when Tokudo came
in to take away the glasses.

Duncan stood up, after the servant had gone again, and bowed to me
very solemnly.

"_Oyasumi nasi_," he said with a stabilizing ironic smile.

"What does that mean?" I asked, doing my best to smile back at him.

"That means 'sleep well,'" explained my husband. "But Tokudo would
probably translate it into 'Condescend to enjoy honorable
tranquillity.'"

Instead of enjoying honorable tranquillity, however, I am sitting up
into the wee sma' hours of the night, patrolling the gloomy ramparts
of my soul's unrest.

_Wednesday the Twenty-Third_

This change to the city means a new life to my children. But I can
also see it means new dangers and new influences. The simplicity of
ranch life has vanished. And Dinkie and Poppsy are already getting
acquainted with their neighbors. A Ford truck came within an inch of
running over Poppsy this morning. She has announced a curiosity to
investigate ice-cream sodas, and Dinkie has proclaimed his intention
of going to the movies Saturday afternoon with Benny McArthur, the
banker's son in the next block. On Monday I'm to take my children to
school. "One of the finest school-buildings in all the West," Duncan
has proudly explained. I can't help thinking of Gershom and his little
cubby-hole of a wooden building where he is even now so solemnly and
yet so kind-heartedly teaching the three R's to a gathering of little
prairie outlaws.

I shall have time on my hands, I see, for Hilton and his wife, our
English gardener-chauffeur and our portly maid-of-all-work, pretty
well cover what the wond