or Doctor Strong. Until his house was completed and
his belongings arrived, Peter undoubtedly had borrowed it. Suddenly a
wild desire to escape swept over Marian. Her first thought was of her
feelings. She was angry, and justly so. In her heart she had begun to
feel that the letters she was receiving were from Peter Morrison. Here
was the proof.

Could it be possible that in their one meeting Peter had decided that
she was his dream woman, that in some way he had secured that rough
sketch of her plans, and from them was preparing her dream house for
her? The thought sped through her brain that he was something more
than human to have secured those plans, to have found that secluded and
choice location. For an instant she forgot the loss of the competition
in trying to comprehend the wonder of finding her own particular house
fitting her own particular location as naturally as one of its big
boulders.

She tried to replace the package of letters exactly as she had found
them. On tiptoe she slipped back to the door and looked searchingly down
the road, around, and as far as possible through the house. Then she
gathered her skirts, stepped from the garage, and began the process
of effacing herself on the mountain side From clump to clump of the
thickest bushes, crouching below the sage and greasewood, pausing to
rest behind lilac and elder, without regard for her traveling suit or
her beautifully shod feet, Marian fled from her location. When at last
she felt that she was completely hidden and at least a mile from the
spot, she dropped panting on a boulder, brushing the debris from her
skirts, lifting trembling hands to straighten her hat, and ruefully
contemplating her shoes. Then she tried to think in a calm,
dispassionate, and reasonable manner, but she found it a most difficult
process. Her mind was not well ordered, neither was it at her
command. It whirled and shot off at unexpected tangents and danced as
irresponsibly as a grasshopper from one place to another. The flying
leaps it took ranged from San Francisco to Lilac Valley, from her
location upon which Peter Morrison was building her house, to Linda.
Even John Gilman obtruded himself once more. At one minute she was
experiencing a raging indignation against Henry Anderson. How had he
secured her plan? At another she was trying to figure dispassionately
what connection Peter Morrison could have had with the building of his
house upon her plan. Every time Peter