He broke off abruptly. On the square rear observation platform of the private car were three ladies. One of them was small and blue-eyed, with wavy little puffs of snowy hair peeping out under her dainty widow's cap. Another was small and blue-eyed, with wavy masses of flaxen hair caught up from a face which might have served as a model for the most exquisite bisque figure that ever came out of France. But Winton saw only the third. She was taller than either of her companions--tall and straight and lithe; a charming embodiment of health and strength and beauty: clear-skinned, brown-eyed--a very goddess fresh from the bath, in Winton's instant summing up of her, and her crown of red-gold hair helped out the simile. Now, thus far in his thirty-year pilgrimage John Winton, man and boy, had lived the intense life of a working hermit, so far as the social gods and goddesses were concerned. Yet he had a pang--of disappointment or pointless jealousy, or something akin to both--when Adams lifted his hat to this particular goddess, was rewarded by a little cry of recognition, and stepped up to the platform to be presented to the elder and younger Bisques. So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he was able to laugh at the “sudden attack,” as he phrased it, but later, when he and Adams were settled for the day-long run in the Denver sleeper, and the Limited was clanking out over the switches, he brought the talk around with a carefully assumed air of lack-interest to the party in the private car. “She is a friend of yours, then?” he said, when Adams had taken the baited hook open-eyed. The Technologian modified the assumption. “Not quite in your sense of the word, I fancy. I met her a number of times at the houses of mutual friends in Boston. She was studying at the Conservatory.” “But she isn't a Bostonian,” said Winton confidently. “Miss Virginia?--hardly. She is a Carteret of the Carterets; Virginia-born-bred-and-named. Stunning girl, isn't she?” “No,” said Winton shortly, resenting the slang for no reason that he could have set forth in words. Adams lighted another of the scented villainies, and his clean-shaven face wrinkled itself in a slow smile. “Which means that she has winged you at sight, I suppose, as she does most men.” Then he added calmly, “It's no go.” “What is 'no go'?” Adams laughed unfeelingly, and puffed away at his cigarette. “You remind me of the fable about the head-hiding ostrich. Didn't I see you staring at her as if you were about to have a fit? But it is just as I tell you: it's no go. She isn't the marrying kind. If you knew her, she'd be nice to you till she got a good chance to flay you alive--” “Break it off!” growled Winton.