inen. Likewise there
were comings and goings, and junketings, all perfectly proper, by the
way, which caused the men to say sharp things and the women to be
spiteful. Only Mrs. Eppingwell did not hear. The distant hum of wagging
tongues rose faintly, but she was prone to believe good of people and to
close her ears to evil; so she paid no heed.

Not so with Freda. She had no cause to love men, but, by some strange
alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,--to women whom she
had less cause to love. And her heart went out to Flossie, even then
travelling the Long Trail and facing into the bitter North to meet a man
who might not wait for her. A shrinking, clinging sort of a girl, Freda
pictured her, with weak mouth and pretty pouting lips, blow-away
sun-kissed hair, and eyes full of the merry shallows and the lesser joys
of life. But she also pictured Flossie, face nose-strapped and frost-
rimed, stumbling wearily behind the dogs. Wherefore she smiled, dancing
one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.

Few men are so constituted that they may receive the smile of Freda
unmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted. The grace he
had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-measure himself, and
by the favor in which he now stood with the Greek dancer he felt himself
doubly a man. There were unknown qualities and depths in him, evidently,
which they perceived. He did not know exactly what those qualities and
depths were, but he had a hazy idea that they were there somewhere, and
of them was bred a great pride in himself. A man who could force two
women such as these to look upon him a second time, was certainly a most
remarkable man. Some day, when he had the time, he would sit down and
analyze his strength; but now, just now, he would take what the gods had
given him. And a thin little thought began to lift itself, and he fell
to wondering whatever under the sun he had seen in Flossie, and to regret
exceedingly that he had sent for her. Of course, Freda was out of the
running. His dumps were the richest on Bonanza Creek, and they were
many, while he was a man of responsibility and position. But Loraine
Lisznayi--she was just the woman. Her life had been large; she could do
the honors of his establishment and give tone to his dollars.

But Freda smiled, and continued to smile, till he came to spend much time
with her. When she, too, rode down the street behind his wolf-dogs, the
model-