Dick was indeed
eager to get a little smattering of Spanish, and perhaps he was not
really quite so stupid as he pretended to be. It was delightful to be
taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so gracious and intense and
magnetic of personality, and by a sweet American girl who moment by
moment forgot her shyness. Gale wished to prolong the lessons.

So that was the beginning of many afternoons in which he learned desert
lore and Spanish verbs, and something else that he dared not name.

Nell Burton had never shown to Gale that daring side of her character
which had been so suggestively defined in Belding's terse description
and Ladd's encomiums, and in her own audacious speech and merry laugh
and flashing eye of that never-to-be-forgotten first meeting. She
might have been an entirely different girl. But Gale remembered; and
when the ice had been somewhat broken between them, he was always
trying to surprise her into her real self. There were moments that
fairly made him tingle with expectation. Yet he saw little more than a
ghost of her vivacity, and never a gleam of that individuality which
Belding had called a devil. On the few occasions that Dick had been
left alone with her in the patio Nell had grown suddenly unresponsive
and restrained, or she had left him on some transparent pretext. On the
last occasion Mercedes returned to find Dick staring disconsolately at
the rose-bordered path, where Nell had evidently vanished. The Spanish
girl was wonderful in her divination.

"Senor Dick!" she cried.

Dick looked at her, soberly nodded his head, and then he laughed.
Mercedes had seen through him in one swift glance. Her white hand
touched his in wordless sympathy and thrilled him. This Spanish girl
was all fire and passion and love. She understood him, she was his
friend, she pledged him what he felt would be the most subtle and
powerful influence.

Little by little he learned details of Nell's varied life. She had
lived in many places. As a child she remembered moving from town to
town, of going to school among schoolmates whom she never had time to
know. Lawrence, Kansas, where she studied for several years, was the
later exception to this changeful nature of her schooling. Then she
moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, from there to Austin, Texas, and on to
Waco, where her mother met and married Belding. They lived in New
Mexico awhile, in Tucson, Arizona, in Douglas, and finally had come to
lonely Forlor