I could marry another man, who was awfully rich-owned a mine and a ranch; but he was so dull the horses would go to sleep when we were out driving ... And then just as I concluded it was the only t

tory? Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while he was at

nfidences. Isabelle, amused by this sketch of the Colorado courtship, patted the blond woman's little hand. Mrs. Falkner had large blue eyes, with waving tendrils of h

would come a

me then and there at the hotel and go live up in the mountains in a cabin above the dam where he was at work. He's romantic. Men are all like that then, don't you think? But

the dam," Isabelle suggested, recalling her own romantic

thing, not a cent, except his salary and that ended with the dam. It was only eighty a month anyway. This is better, a hundred and fifty," she explained with childish frankness. "But Rob

spitable house-they had two small children and Bessie had confide

lkner added in revery, "is m

ion over what might have been

nd I,-except for the bil

laugh. She found this pretty, fran

wasn't any. But what is one to do? You've got to go on living somehow. Rob says we can't afford this house,-Rob is always afraid we w

en of more conventional social qualities, had found the young engineer glum and odd. He had a stern, rather handsome face, a deep furrow dividing his forehead and meeting the part of his thick brown hair, which curled slightly at the ends. "If he didn't look so cross, he would be quite han

ounds of it, I mean,-so that it

his wife from her c

mark was eq

n than he had shown all the evening, "and that's the coke-ovens at night-have yo

civil engineer, in Torso, Indiana,

stayed in Colorado?

ver sleep out on a mountain with the stars close above y

he was quoting poetry,

rs

ur home in Connecticut. But I don't suppose

lied dryly,

greeable, telling stories of his youth spent among the mountains with a primitive people. She had observed that he drank a good deal of whiskey, and there was something in his black eyes that m

e had found for Bessie Falkner.) "So natural and amusing! She's very W

he seems original. I shouldn't wonder if he were clever

and why Isabelle seemed so much more eager to know these people-these Darnells and Falkners-than the Frasers and t

hat salary," Isabelle remarked.

ke somethin

*

ation. It was useless to go over the affair with Rob, as he was merely bored. But she spent hours thinking what the women said and how they looked and deciding whom she could have the next time. On her way to bed she went

ed. "I shall have to let her go if I c

kners were perpetually changing their two

aps," Mrs. Falkner had observ

these ideas and strove all the harder to achieve magnificent results. Though the livery of service was practically unknown in Torso, she had resolved to induce her

usband protested. "They

ty and charm, had won her way into whatever society Kansas City and Denver could offer. She had also visited here and there in different parts of the country,-once in New York, and again at a cottage on the New England coast where there were eight servants, a yacht, and horses. These experiences of luxury, of an easy and large social li

ooked in vain for the drinking water that the ma

make out those estimates somehow before mor

o-night. If he wants to get on,-why, they are the sort of people he ought to know." Her husband's freakish temper gave her much trouble, his unexpectedly bearish moods when she was doing her very best for him, "bringing him out" as she put it, making the right kind of friends,-influential ones, so that he might have some chance in the scramble for the good things of life. Surel

airs in his attic workroom, doing extra work or reading. Could it be that he was growing tired of her, so soon, in four years? She glanced over her shoulder at her pretty arms, her plump white neck reflected in the

s. Fraser's or Mrs. Adams's. She herself had made the salad and prepared the iced grape-fruit. Every limb ached-she was always so tired. She loved this last quiet hour of the day that she had by herself, now that the nurse took both the children. With her delicate health the nurse had been a necessity. She usually looked blooming and rosy, but was always tired, always had been as long as sh

love of a cowboy for the fair daughter of a railroad president. She longed for the caresses of her cow-boy lover, and wondered dreamily if Lane were a devoted husband. He seemed so; but all men were probab

ate quarters. A book might be written on the doing away of the conjugal bed in American life! There should be interesting observations on the effect of this change, social, and hygienic, and moral,-oh, most interesting! ... A contented smile at last stole over the young wife's face. Was she dreaming of her babies, of those first days of love,

omen with their marvellous powers of absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn "how to live as other people do

price. Living was not cheap even in Torso, and the cost of living was ever going higher, so the papers said and the wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live "like other people."

rary." So they had read together a book of travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and latterly nothing. Taking another cigarette, the man read on, and before his tired eyes rose the purple peaks of the Rockies, the shining crests of snow, the azu

the trail to look into the gi