nly
when he fairly towered over the two girls did he push back the hat
which already he had touched to them, standing with his hands on his
hips, his heavy features bespeaking a deep inward serenity and quiet
good humor.

It would have required a blinder man than Jim Galloway not to have
marked the cool dislike and distrust in Virginia's eyes. But, though
he turned from them to the pink-and-white girl at her side, he gave no
sign of sensing that he was in any way unwelcome here.

He had greeted Virginia casually; she, observing him keenly, understood
what Florrie had meant by a man's making love with his eyes. His look,
directed downward into the face smiling up at him, was alive with what
was obviously a very genuine admiration. While Florrie allowed her
flattered soul to drink deep and thirstily of the wine of adulation
Virginia, only half understanding the writing in Galloway's eyes,
shivered a little and, leaning forward suddenly, put her hand on
Florrie's arm; the gesture, quick and spontaneous, meant nothing to
Florrie, nothing to Galloway, and a very great deal to Virginia Page.
For it was essentially protective; it served to emphasize in her own
mind a fear which until now had been a mere formless mist, a fear for
her frivolous little friend. Galloway's whole being was so expressive
of conscious power, Florrie's of vacillating impulsiveness, that it
required no considerable burden laid upon the imagination to picture
the girl coming if he called . . . if he called with the look in his
eyes now, with the tone he knew to put into his voice.

Social lines are none too clearly drawn in towns like San Juan; often
enough they have long ago failed to exist. A John Engle, though six
days of the seven he sat behind his desk in a bank, was only a man, his
daughter only the daughter of a mere man; a Jim Galloway, though he
owned the Casa Blanca and upon occasion stood behind his own bar, might
be a man and look with level eyes upon all other men, their wives, and
their daughters. Here, with conditions what they always had been,
there could stand but one barrier between Galloway and Florrie Engle,
the barrier of character. And already the girl had cried: "His eyes
are not bad eyes, are they?" A barrier is a silent command to pause;
what is the spontaneous answer of a spoiled child to any command?

Galloway spoke lightly of this and that, managing in a dozen little
ways to compliment Florrie who chattered with a