Mother and good sister, for the little home in the Rhine village where
the terraces of grapes lay just back of our house; that never is
forgotten, no matter how long one lives. We have a common bond of
sympathy, may I hope it means a tie of friendship?"

She gave him her hand and shortly afterwards he led her back
into the ballroom; but the music could not tempt them to dance again
and, after seeing Renestine with friends, he said good-night and left.

It was near daylight when Jaffray smoked his last cigar and
finally put out the light in his little room in the hotel and went to
bed.



Jaffray paid frequent visits to Houston from McKinney, after he
met Miss Jewel. Although Renestine was busy with her school work, her
sister permitted her, like all the young girls, to accept the
attentions of young men who wished to call or who invited her to social
affairs.

Jaffray was some years older than Renestine and was aware that
she was but a school girl, untutored in the ways of the world, even
less than most girls of her age. But Renestine's modesty, her
innocence, her beauty, appealed to him as no other woman's charms had
done and thoughts of her took possession him. His stuffy little office
in McKinney, in the long, narrow store where general merchandise was
rather irregularly piled around in high wooden boxes, in barrels, and
on shallow shelves, became a prison house and the weeks endless terms
of sentence. It happened that be could not absent himself from duty