Clayton was standing idly in front of his hotel. Sibyl Dudley and Mary Jasper were driving by in the cool bright sunshine of the late afternoon. Sibyl glanced keenly at the well-known figure. Clayton had lost much in trimness and neatness of appearance by his long sojourn in Paradise Valley. His clothing was ill-fitting, and his almost useless left arm appeared to swing more stiffly than ever, as the crowd jostled him. The contrast between the stylishly-dressed woman in the carriage and this man who had once been her husband was marked. Yet the handsome face of the man was still there, almost unseamed, and it revealed kindness and cultured intelligence, as of old. “It is Doctor Clayton!” she said. “He looks so lonely and is such a stranger here that it will be a kindness if we speak to him. I knew him very well once, you know.” The horses had trotted on, unnoticed by Clayton. Sibyl spoke now to the driver, and the carriage was turned and driven back to the hotel. The old desire to prove her power over this man possessed her. And she might be able to use him! “Speak to him,” she said to Mary. “It will please him, I’m sure, to meet some one he knows. And it’s so long since I met him that he may have forgotten me entirely.” The carriage with the well-groomed horses in their shining harness had drawn up at the curb. Even yet the abstracted doctor had not observed the occupants of the carriage. But now, when Mary addressed him, he looked up, almost startled to hear his name spoken there. He recognized Mary, and his face flushed a deep red when he recognized also the woman who sat smiling beside her. “It is Doctor Clayton, is it not?” said Sibyl, speaking to him and using her utmost witchery. “It seems so strange to see you away from Paradise Valley. But it is a pleasure.” He came up to the carriage, hesitating for words. He did not trust this woman, yet he could not forget what she had once been to him. And he had always liked Mary, as he liked her crabbed old father. He had justified himself for not speaking to Sloan Jasper, with the thought that he really knew nothing concerning the life that Sibyl was living. When a man cannot justify his actions he loses self-respect, and Clayton had never lost his self-respect. He had known nothing of Sibyl’s private life from the moment of his plunge into the world-forgotten valley of Paradise. He knew nothing now. As he looked into her eyes, the trepidation and confusion which had produced that hot flush was mingled with pity and a yearning touch of the old love. She had faded, she was garish, yet she was Sibyl, and to him still beautiful; Sibyl, whom he had loved and married, and from whom he had fled. “You are looking well,” he said to Mary, though she was not looking well, for trouble with Ben had set shadows in her dark eyes. “And you, too Mrs.——” He hesitated.