And he certainly had given her a pretty home. The house was not large enough to be pointed out by the conductor of the “Seeing Butte Car,” but it had been designed by a first rate architect, and had a certain air of spaciousness within. Mrs. Stratton had furnished a flat in Paris two years before her husband’s death, her excuse being that the interior of the Butte house got on her nerves, and there was no other way to take in household goods free of duty. Ora had shipped them when the news of her father’s death and their own poverty came, knowing that she would get a better price for the furniture in Butte, where someone always was building, than in Paris. Before it arrived she had made up her mind to marry Mark Blake, and although it was several years before they had a house she kept it in storage. In consequence her little drawing-room with its gay light formal French furniture was unique in Butte, city of substantial and tasteful (sometimes) but quite unindividual homes. Mark was thankful that he was light of foot, less the bull in the china shop than he looked, and would have preferred red walls, an oriental divan and Persian rugs. He felt more at home in the library, a really large room lined from floor to ceiling not only with Ora’s but Judge Stratton’s books, which Mark had bought for a song at the auction; and further embellished with deep leather chairs and several superb pieces of carved Italian furniture. Ora spent the greater part of her allowance on books, and many hours of her day in this room. But tonight she deliberately went into the frivolous French parlour, turned on all the lights, and sat down to await her husband’s reappearance. Mark, who had taken kindly to the idea of dressing for dinner, came running downstairs in a few moments. “In the doll’s house?” he called out, as he saw the illumination in the drawing-room. “Oh, come on into a real room and mix me a cocktail.” “It isn’t good for you to drink cocktails so long before eating; Huldah, who receives ‘The People’s War Cry’ on Monday, informed me that dinner would be half an hour late.” “I wish you’d chuck that wooden-faced leaden-footed apology for a servant. This is the third time----” “And get a worse? Butte rains efficient servants! Please sit down. I--_feel_ like this room tonight. You may smoke.” “Thanks. I believe this is the first time you have given me permission. But I’m bound to say the room suits you.” Ora sat in a _chaise-longue_ of the XV^{me} Siècle, a piece of furniture whose awkward grace gives a woman’s arts full scope. Much exercise had preserved the natural suppleness of Ora’s body and she had ancestral memories of all arts and wiles. Mark seated himself on the edge of a stiff little sofa covered with faded Aubusson tapestry, and hunched his shoulders. “If the French women furnish their rooms like this I don’t believe all that’s said about them,” he commented wisely. “Men like to be comfortable even when they’re looking at a pretty woman.”