Another one, he thought, just throwing herself at
him. Guess it wouldn't hurt Loraine to cool her feet by the water-hole a
little longer.

"Well?" This time from Freda, but softly and anxiously.

"I don't know what to say," he hastened to answer, adding to himself that
it was coming along quicker than he had expected. "Nothing I'd like
better, Freda. You know that well enough." He pressed her hand, palm to
palm. She nodded. Could she wonder that she despised the breed?

"But you see, I--I'm engaged. Of course you know that. And the girl's
coming into the country to marry me. Don't know what was up with me when
I asked her, but it was a long while back, and I was all-fired young--"

"I want to go away, out of the land, anywhere," she went on, disregarding
the obstacle he had reared up and apologized for. "I have been running
over the men I know and reached the conclusion that--that--"

"I was the likeliest of the lot?"

She smiled her gratitude for his having saved her the embarrassment of
confession. He drew her head against his shoulder with the free hand,
and somehow the scent of her hair got into his nostrils. Then he
discovered that a common pulse throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, where their
palms were in contact. This phenomenon is easily comprehensible from a
physiological standpoint, but to the man who makes the discovery for the
first time, it is a most wonderful thing. Floyd Vanderlip had caressed
more shovel-handles than women's hands in his time, so this was an
experience quite new and delightfully strange. And when Freda turned her
head against his shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek till his eyes met
hers, full and at close range, luminously soft, ay, and tender--why,
whose fault was it that he lost his grip utterly? False to Flossie, why
not to Loraine? Even if the women did keep bothering him, that was no
reason he should make up his mind in a hurry. Why, he had slathers of
money, and Freda was just the girl to grace it. A wife she'd make him
for other men to envy. But go slow. He must be cautious.

"You don't happen to care for palaces, do you?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Well, I had a hankering after them myself, till I got to thinking, a
while back, and I've about sized it up that one'd get fat living in
palaces, and soft and lazy."

"Yes, it's nice for a time, but you soon grow tired of it, I imagine,"
she hastened to reassure him. "The world is good, but life sho