hould hope for such a placid courtship for
them. It took just that ordeal to bring out your really fine points.
They were there all the time, dear, but I might never have known they
were there. Why, I've lived over those few days, step by step, a hundred
times! The wreck, the celebration at Wolf River--" she paused and
shuddered, and her husband took up the sequence, mercilessly:

"And your ride with Purdy, and Old Bat thrusting the gun into my hand
and urging me to follow--and when I looked up and saw you both on the
rim of the bench and saw him drag you from your horse--then the mad dash
up the steep trail, and the quick shot as he raised above the sage
brush--and then, the fake lynching bee--only it was very real to me as I
stood there in the moonlight under that cottonwood limb with a noose
about my neck. And then the long ride through the night, and the meeting
with you at the ford where you were waiting with Old Bat----"

"And the terrible thunder storm, and the bursting reservoir, and the
dust storm in the bad lands," continued the girl. "Oh, it was all so--so
horrible, and yet--as long as I live I will be glad to have lived those
few short days. I learned to know men--big, strong men in action--what
they will do--and what they will not do. The Texan with his
devil-may-care ways that masked the real character of him. And you,
darling--the real you--who had always remained hidden beneath the veneer
of your culture and refinement. Then suddenly the veneer was knocked off
and for the first time in your life the fine fibre of you--the real
_stuff_ you are made of, got the chance to assert itself. You stood the
test, dear--stood it as not one man in a hundred who had lived your
prosaic well-ordered life would have stood it----"

"Nonsense!" laughed the man. "You're grossly prejudiced. You were in
love with me anyway--you know you were. You would have married me in
time."

"I was not! I wasn't a bit in love with you--and I wouldn't have married
you ever, if it hadn't been for the test." She paused suddenly, and her
eyes became serious, "But Win, Tex stood the test too--and he really did
love me. Do you know that my heart just aches for that boy, out there
all alone in the country he loves--for he _is_ of different stuff than
the rest of them. He likes the men--he is one of them--but he would
never choose a wife from among their women, and his big heart is just
yearning for a woman's love. I shall never forget the la