emulate the Priest and the Levite by
passing by on the other side when Peter asked me if I'd ever heard that
the West was good for mules and men but hard on horses and women. And it
suddenly struck me as odd, the timidities and reticences which nature
imposes on our souls. It seemed so ridiculous that the three of us
couldn't sit there and unbosom our hearts of what was hidden away in
them, that we couldn't be open and honest and aboveboard and say just
what we felt and thought, that we couldn't quietly talk things out to an
end and find where each and all of us stood. But men and women are not
made that way. Otherwise, I suppose, life would be too Edenic, and we'd
part company with a very old and venerable interest in Paradise!

[Illustration: "She's not dead?" I asked in a breath]

_Saturday the Second_

Peter had arranged to come for us with a motor-car and carry us all
off to the Rose Tournament yesterday morning, "for I do want to be
sitting right next to that little tike of yours," he explained,
meaning Dinkie, "when he bumps into his first brass band!"

But little Dinkie didn't hear his brass band, and we didn't go to the
Rose Tournament, although it was almost at our doors and some eighty
thousand crowded automobiles foregathered here from the rest of the
state to get a glimpse of it. For Peter, who is staying at the Greene
here instead of at the Alexandria over in Los Angeles, presented
himself before I'd even sat down to breakfast and before lazy old
Dinky-Dunk was even out of bed.

Peter, I noticed, had a somewhat hollow look about the eye, but I
accepted it as nothing more than the after-effects of his long trip,
and blithely commanded him to sit down and partake of my coffee.

Peter, however, wasn't thinking about coffee.

"I'm afraid," he began, "that I'm bringing you rather--rather bad
news."

We stood for a moment with our gazes locked. He seemed appraising me,
speculating on just what effect this message of his might have on me.

"What is it?" I asked, with that forlorn tug at inner reserves which
life teaches us to send over the wire as we grow older.

"I've come," explained Peter, "simply because this thing would have
reached you a little later in your morning paper--and I hated the
thought of having it spring out at you that way. So you won't mind,
will you? You'll understand the motive behind the message?"

"But what is it?" I repeated, a little astonishe