There ain't the power this side of Kingdom Come that could make me let go if I don't want to." She thought of his wife, of his losing fight against the craving for morphine, and she replied very gently: "If you hadn't been a good fighter, I suppose you would have been beaten long ago." "So long ago," he retorted with jovial humour, "that you wouldn't have known me." An impulse of curiosity urged her to an utterly irrelevant response.

"I wonder if you have known many women ?" She felt that she should like to hear his story from him, there in the deserted yard; but when he answered her, he revealed a personal reticence worthy of the aristocratic traditions of Mrs.Carr.

"Oh, I haven't had time for them," he replied indifferently.
"Perhaps there aren't so many in Bonanza City ?" "Oh, there're plenty," he rejoined gaily, "if you take the trouble to look for them." "And you didn't ?" They had entered the house, and she spoke merrily as she crossed to the staircase.
"Well, the sort I found didn't take my fancy, you see!" he tossed back playfully from his door.
Her foot was on the lowest step, when, hesitating with a birdlike movement, she looked at him over her right shoulder.
"Well, that's a pity.

A woman could have told you a good many things," she observed.
"For instance ?" He was still jesting.
Poised for flight, she gazed back at him, challenging his eyes.
"Oh, not to collect gold-headed walking-sticks, not to believe in golden-oak, and not to be so extravagantly--slangy." As she ran up the staircase, a burst of laughter followed her in the midst of which she distinguished the retort: "Well, I own to the slang, but I inherited the oak, and the sticks were all given me--by women." The temptation to fling back, "of a sort ?" came to her; but she conquered it as she passed demurely into the sitting-room, where Miss Polly was reading the afternoon paper before an open fire.

"I mustn't get too friendly," she told herself, reprovingly.