what
they might signify.

When she met Knight his manner was as usual: kind, unobtrusive, slightly
stiff, as though he were embarrassed--though he never showed signs of
embarrassment with any one else. She could hardly believe that she had
not dreamed those words overheard in the moonlight.

Week after week slipped away. The one excitement at Las Cruces Ranch was
the fighting across the border; the great "scare" at El Paso, and the
stories of small yet sometimes tragic raids made by bands of cattle
stealers upon American ranches which touched the Rio Grande. The water
was low. This made private marauding expeditions easier, and the men of
Las Cruces Ranch were prepared for anything.

* * * * *

One night in May there was a sandstorm, which as usual played strange
tricks with Annesley's nerves. She could never grow used to these storms,
and the moaning of the hot wind seemed to her a voice that wailed for
coming trouble. Knight had been away on one of his motoring expeditions
to the Organ Mountains, and though he had told the Chinese boy that he
would be back for dinner, he did not come. Doors and windows were closed
against the blowing sand, but they could not shut out the voice of the
wind.

After dinner Annesley tried to read a new book from the library at El
Paso, but between her eyes and the printed page would float the picture
of a small, open automobile and its driver lost in clouds of yellow sand.

Why should she care? The man was used to roughing it. He liked
adventures. He was afraid of nothing, and nothing ever hurt him. But she
did care. She seemed to feel the sting of the sharp grains of sand on
cheeks and eyes.

She was sitting in her own room, as she was accustomed to do in the
evening if she were not out on the veranda--the pretty room which Knight
had extravagantly made possible for her, with chintzes and furnishings
from the best shops in El Paso. On this evening, however, she set both
doors wide open, one which led into the living room, another leading into
a corridor or hall. She could not fail to hear her husband when he came,
even if he left his noisy car at the garage and walked to the house.

A travelling clock on the mantelpiece--Constance Annesley-Seton's
gift--struck nine. The girl looked up at the first stroke, wondering if
serious accidents were likely to happen in sandstorms; and before the
last note had ended she heard steps in the patio.

"He has