conquered his black mood entirely when Sylvia came up to him. She
regarded him a moment timidly, and then she put her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up at her with the alert kindliness which she had learned to
prize.

"I'm afraid you're fearfully disappointed," she said.

"I was. But I'm not now." He told her what his theory was, putting it into
a few detached words. But she understood and brightened immediately.

"Do you suppose that's it?" she asked.

"What else could it be?" He arose. "Isn't Antonia ready?"

"I think so. And there are so many ways for us to be happy without going
to their silly affairs. Imagine getting any pleasure out of sitting around
watching a girl trying to get a man! That's all they amount to, those
things. We'll get horses and ride. It's ever so much more sensible."

She felt like a culprit let out of prison as she followed him down into
the dining-room. For the moment she was no longer the fatalist, foreseeing
inevitable exposure and punishment. Nothing had come of their meeting with
Peterson--an incident which had taken her wholly by surprise, and which
had threatened for an instant to result disastrously. She had spent
wakeful hours as a result of that meeting; but the cloud of apprehension
had passed, leaving her sky serene again. And now Harboro had put aside
the incident of the Mesquite Club ball as if it did not involve anything
more than a question of pique.

She took her place at the end of the table, and propped her face up in her
hands while Harboro carved the roast. Why shouldn't she hope that the
future was hers, to do with as she would--or, at least, as she could? That
her fate now lay in her own hands, and not in every passing wind of
circumstance, seemed possible, even probable. If only....

A name came into her mind suddenly; a name carved in jagged, sinister
characters. If only Fectnor would stay away off there in the City.

She did not know why that name should have occurred to her just now to
plague her. Fectnor was an evil bird of passage who had come and gone.
Such creatures had no fixed course. He had once told her that only a fool
ever came back the way he had gone. He belonged to the States, somewhere,
but he would come back by way of El Paso, if he ever came back; or he
would drift over toward Vera Cruz or Tampico.

Fectnor was one of those who had trod that path through the mesquite to
Sylvia's back door in the days which were ended. But he was different fr