answered. "If you did, you wouldn't put it in that way." He smiled a
little and looked off at the golden path on the lake. "So," he said after
a moment, and his glance returned to meet Tisdale's squarely, "she has
absolutely nothing now but that tract of unimproved desert on the other
side of the Cascades."




CHAPTER II

THE QUESTION


Sometime, high on a mountain slope, a cross current of air, or perhaps a
tremor of the surface occasioned far off, starts the small snow-cap, that
sliding, halting, impelled forward again, always accumulating, gathering
momentum, finally becomes the irresistible avalanche. So Marcia Feversham,
the following morning, gave the first slight impetus to the question that
eventually menaced Tisdale with swift destruction. She was not taking the
early train with her husband; she desired to break the long journey and,
after the season in the north, prolong the visit with her relatives in
Seattle. The delegate had left her sleeping, but when he had finished the
light breakfast served him alone in the Morganstein dining-room and
hurried out to the waiting limousine, to his surprise he found her in the
car. "I am going down to see you away," she explained; "this salt breeze
with the morning tide is so delightfully fresh."

There was no archness in her glance; her humor was wholly masculine. A
firm mouthy brilliant, dark eyes, the heavy Morganstein brows that met