aving played the fool. His
helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But--her smile
could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold
elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of
stone-like hardness.

"Oh!" she cried, in her irrepressible happiness of heart. "You're
home! You're safe! I'm glad!"

It was nothing, her cry that he was safe. She had worried only for the
desert's customary perils, but this he could not know. He thought she
referred to a possible meeting with Barger. He was almost swept from
his balance by her look, for a bright bit of moisture had sprung in her
eyes and her smile took on a tenderness that all but conquered him anew.

"I delivered your letter in Starlight," he said. "I return your
brother's reply."

He had taken the letter from his pocket. He held it forth.

She took it. If memories of Glen started rushingly upon her, they were
halted by something she felt in the air, something in the cold, set
speech of the man she loved as never she had thought to love a creature
of the earth. She made no reply, but stood looking peculiarly upon
him, a question written plainly in her glance.

"If there is nothing more," he added, "permit me to wish you good-day."
He swept off his hat as he had before, turned promptly on his heel, and
departed the scene forthwith.

She tried to cry out, to ask him what it meant, but the thing had come
like a blow. It had not been what he had said, so much as the manner
of its saying--not so much what she had heard as what her heart had
felt. A deluge of ice water, suddenly thrown upon her, could scarcely
have chilled or shocked her more than the coldness that had bristled
from his being.

Wholly at a loss to understand, she leaned in sudden weakness against
the frame of the door, and watched him disappearing. Her smile was
gone. In its place a dumb, white look of pain and bewilderment had
frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her
nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to
oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke--some
freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown.
But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been
unmistakable. Then, what could it mean?

She almost cried, as she stood there and saw him vanish. She had
counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safe