Not the next week, when he appeared from town in the middle of the afternoon, all unheralded and paler than ordinary, with papers to sign, and the exhilarating news that the insurance companies had paid up, and a new bank-book with her name and comforting fat figures in it. How desperately glad she had been over that. For hot shame possessed her at her appearance--shabby clothes and hardly any of them, when his ready-made dust-colored garments had immediately been replaced by the well-fitting blue serge that was her special weakness in masculine attire. She had invested heavily in frills and slowly regained her self-respect. And not when he had appeared with a list of her property--how had he come by that list?--stating that he had made arrangements to lease certain pieces and rebuild at once on the others, and asking her approval of the final arrangements. She had not suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden, tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and the memory of its great disaster. She turned to the letter again. Bixler McFay had always written a good letter. This time he quite surpassed himself. Heart-broken, unreconciled; his hopes shipwrecked; his faith destroyed. How could she have treated him so? She had been practically engaged to him; and she had left him a prey to every horrible emotion at a time when one word would have put his mind at rest. No clew as to her whereabouts by which he could trace her. She passed that over with her little crooked, sarcastic smile. She had telegraphed and written both--and the second letter had been registered. He had probably forgotten that little fact. But it was of little consequence now. The sting lay in what followed. And then what did he learn? the letter inquired. That a man he supposed to be his friend, a fellow he had met daily in Arizona for a couple of months at a time, had systematically pumped him about her; had taken means of ascertaining her financial status, and, recognizing her as his opportunity (that was where the word came from) had rushed off to San Francisco, married her hand over fist, and launched himself as a capitalist--on her capital. And she had allowed it. The girl dropped the pages in her lap. Her little fist came down on top of them. "It's a despicable letter," she told herself hotly. "And what he thinks to gain by it, I don't know. He just wants to make trouble.--And he has," she breathed with a downward sigh. The question was, what to do now. And pride stood at her elbow and pointed out the only course. This Arthur Hammond, this big, quiet, self-contained, efficient, indifferent young man--whose opportunity she was--must never know that she knew, or, knowing, cared. That was the only solution. Pride forbade a scene--on his account; on hers; on Bixler McFay's; on everybody's, when it came to that. No one should know--anything.