awnin' with Tim Muldoon. He's a policeman I
met down there. Miss Kitty hasn't been seen since that night. We went
out to the Pirate's Den, the Purple Pup, Grace Godwin's Garret, and all
the places where she used to sell cigarettes. None of them have seen
anything of her."

"So that really your championship hasn't been so great a help to her
after all, has it?"

"No."

"And I suppose it ruined the business of the man that owns the Sea
Siren."

"I don't reckon so. I've settled for the furniture. And Muldoon says
when it gets goin' again the Sea Siren will do a big business on
account of the fracas. It's Kitty I'm worried about."

"She's a kind of cuddly little girl who needs the protection of some
nice man, you say?"

"That's right."

The eyes of Miss Whitford were unfathomable. "Fluffy and--kind of
helpless."

"Yes."

"I wouldn't worry about her if I were you. She'll land on her feet,"
the girl said lightly.

Her voice had not lost its sweet cadences, but Clay sensed in it
something that was almost a touch of cool contempt. He felt vaguely
that he must have blundered in describing Kitty. Evidently Miss
Whitford did not see her quite as she was.

The young woman pressed the starter button. "We must be going home. I
have an engagement to go riding with Mr. Bromfield."

The man beside the girl kept his smile working and concealed the little
stab of jealousy that dirked him. Colin Whitford had confided to
Lindsay that his daughter was practically engaged to Clarendon
Bromfield and that he did not like the man. The range-rider did not
like him either, but he tried loyally to kill his distrust of the
clubman. If Beatrice loved him there must be good in the fellow. Clay
meant to be a good loser anyhow.

There had been moments when the range-rider's heart had quickened with
a wild, insurgent hope. One of these had been on a morning when they
were riding in the Park, knee to knee, in the dawn of a new clean
world. It had come to him with a sudden clamor of the blood that in
the eternal rightness of things such mornings ought to be theirs till
the youth in them was quenched in sober age. He had looked into the
eyes of this slim young Diana, and he had throbbed to the certainty
that she too in that moment of tangled glances knew a sweet confusion
of the blood. In her cheeks there had been a quick flame of flying
color. Their talk had fallen from them, and they had ridden in a shy,
exquisite