window--it would seem to avoid his caress. "The odor of that dining room is
enough to make one fast forever." She lifted the grimy lace curtain with
her finger tips and looked disconsolately out upon the street. "It's just a
dirty, squalid little hamlet. I don't suppose the streets have been
cleaned or the garbage removed from the back yards since the place was
first--founded." She laughed shortly at the idea of "founding" a wretched
village like that, but she had no other word at hand.

"_Arline_," she remarked, in a tone of drawling recklessness. "Arline
swears. Did you know it? I suppose, of course, you do. She said something
that struck me as being shockingly true. She said I'm 'sure having a hell
of a honeymoon.'" Then she bit her lips hard, because her eyelids were
stinging with the tears she refused to shed in his presence.

"Oh, Val!" From the sofa Manley stared contritely at her back. She must
feel terrible, he thought, to bring herself to repeat that sentence--Val,
so icily pure in her thoughts and her speech.

Val was blinking her tawny eyes--like the eyes of a lion in color--at the
street. Not for the world would she let him see that she wanted to cry! A
figure, blurred to indistinctness, appealed in a doorway nearly opposite,
stood for a moment looking up at the reddened sky, and came across the
street. As the tears were beaten back she saw and recognized him, with a
curl of the lip.

"Here comes your cowboy friend--from a saloon, of course." Her voice
was lazily contemptuous. "Only his presence in the street was needed to
complete the picture of desolation. He has been in a fight, judging from
his face. It is all bruised and skinned, and one eye is swollen--ugh! My
guide, my adviser--is it possible, Manley, that you couldn't find a _nice_