since smoked, and of the baptism of bad whisky, but also with the air
of conscious rectitude which sits so comically upon a man unused to the
feeling of virtue.

As is so often the case when one fights alone the good fight and manages to
win, he was chagrined to find himself immediately put upon the defensive.
Val, as she speedily demonstrated, declined to look upon him as a hero, or
as being particularly virtuous. She considered herself rather neglected and
abused. She believed that he had stayed away because he was angry with her
on account of her refusal to leave town, and she thought that was rather
brutal of him. Also, her head ached from tears and lack of sleep, and she
hated the town, the hotel--almost she hated Manley himself.

Manley felt the rebuff of her chilling silence when he came in, and when
she twitched herself loose from his embrace he came near regretting his
extreme virtue. He spent ten minutes trying to explain, without telling all
of the truth, and he felt his good opinion of himself slipping from him
before her inexorable disfavor.

"Well, I don't blame you for not liking the town, Val," he said at last,
rather desperately. "But you mustn't judge the whole country by it. You'll
like the ranch, dear. You'll feel as if you were in another world--"

"I hope so," Val interrupted quellingly.

"We'll drive out there just as soon as we have breakfast." He laid his hand
diffidently upon her tumbled hair. "I _had_ to stay out there with those
fellows. I didn't want to--"

"I don't want any breakfast," said Val, getting up and going over to the