to face the cowardice that lurked in the
bottom of her soul. Heroic in every other development of her highly bred
character, she had all the secret fear and antagonism of her sex for the
other, a profound resentment of the male instinct for possession, and
the deeper terror that what Gwynne might find would eventually make her
wholly his. Life had given her a deep surface; the depths below it sent
up rare vibrations; and her mind was seldom unoccupied. She could add
layer upon layer of evasions and subtleties with no prospect of a rude
disturbance; and when the wind ceased for a time she tramped over the
hills. But she missed Gwynne increasingly, wondered that he did not
brave the elements and come out to her; finally felt herself shamefully
neglected, and would not answer his occasional telephone queries as to
her well-being.

II

Three days of floundering through the mud between Lumalitas and
Rosewater exhausted Gwynne's patience, and he engaged a furnished suite
of rooms on Main Street, moved in his law library, Imura Kisaburo
Hinomoto, and several easy-chairs, invested in a red wall-paper for his
sitting-room, and was immediately so comfortable, and so relieved to be
rid of his dripping sighing trees and flooded valley, that he was almost
happy. As he looked down from his window upon the slope of the street
crowded with muddy wagons and men in oil-skins and high rubber boots, he
recalled the ironical picture Isabel had drawn, that memorable night at
Capheaton, of his own future appearance; and as he could not ride out to
Old Inn in any other garb, an excess of vanity deterred him from going
at all. To be sure he could drive out in a closed surrey, but he would
have felt equally ridiculous, and Isabel, beyond doubt, would scorn him.
Better let her think him indifferent for a while; it might do her good.
He could save himself from discourtesy by telephoning occasionally, and,
for the matter of that, the less he thought of her at present the
better.

For the first time he came intimately in contact with the men of
Rosewater: "leading citizens" too busy to call upon him at Lumalitas, or
to sit down in their places of business for a chat during the day, and
too well trained to ask strangers home for dinner, were any hospitable
instincts left in them. But they soon discovered that his rooms were
very comfortable and inviting, his whiskey and tobacco "above par." The
homeless citizens of Rosewater, while their w