and moved pointedly away from her
vicinity, her lip began to tremble, and her wide blue eyes were brimming.

"Come on, take me away quick," she said pathetically. "I'm going to cry."

When they were in the car again she turned in the seat, buried her face in
her arms and sobbed passionately with a gulping noise and spasmodic
upheavals of her shoulders. Ramon drove slowly. He was sober now,
painfully sober! He was utterly disgusted with himself, and bitterly sorry
for Dora. A strong bond of sympathy had suddenly been created between
them, for he too had tasted the bitterness of prejudice. For the first
time Dora was not merely a frumpy woman who had provoked in him a desire
he half-despised; she was a fellow human, who knew the same miseries.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} He
had intended to take her this night, to make a great play for success, but
he no longer felt that way. He drove to the boarding house where she
lived.

"Here you are," he said gently, "I'll call you up tomorrow."

Dora looked up for the first time.

"O, no!" she plead. "Don't go off and leave me now. Don't leave me alone.
Take me somewhere, anywhere.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Do anything you want with me.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} You're all
I've got!"

CHAPTER XXXI

The rest of the winter Ramon spent in an aimlessly pleasant way. He tried
to work but without arousing in himself enough enthusiasm to insure
success. He played pool, gambled a little and hunted a great deal. He
relished his pleasures with the keen appetite of health and youth, but
when they were over he felt empty-minded and restless and did not know
what to do about it.

Some business came to his law office. Because of his knowledge of Spanish
and of the country he was several times employed to look up titles to
land, and this line of work he might have developed into a good practice
had he possessed the patience. But it was monotonous, tedious work, and it
bored him. He would toil over the papers with a good will for a while, and
then a state of apathy would come over him, and like a boy in school he
would sit vaguely dreaming.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Such dull tasks took no hold upon his mind.

He defended several Mexican criminals, and found this a more congenial
form of practice, but an unremunerative one. The only case which advanced
him toward the reputation for which every young attorney strives brought
him no money at all. A young Mexican far