Yet how difficult it is to retain all our friends, though we come with gifts in both hands! Rimrock rewarded Hassayamp and L. W., and Woo Chong, and every man who had done him a kind act. If money can cement friendships he had won over the whole town, but with Mary Fortune he had failed. On that first triumphant night when, after their bout with Stoddard, they realized the true value of their mine; in the dim light of the balcony and speaking secretly into her ear, he had won, for one instant, a kiss. But it was a kiss of ecstasy, of joy at their triumph and the thought that she had saved him from defeat; and when he laid hold of her and demanded another she had fought back and leapt up and fled. And after that, repentance; the same, joyless waiting; and, at last, drink again, to forget. And then humbler repentance and forgiveness of a kind, but the sweet trustfulness was lost from her smile. So with money and friends there came little happiness, either for Rimrock or yet for her. They looked at each other across a chasm of differences where any chance word might offend. He had alluded at one time to the fact that she was deaf and she had avoided his presence for days. And she had a way, when his breath smelled of drink, of drawing her head away. Once when he spoke to her in his loud, outdoor voice she turned away and burst into tears; but she would never explain what it was that had hurt her, more than to ask him not to do it again. So it went until his wild, ungoverned nature broke all bounds and he turned to drink. Yet if the first phase of his devotion had been passed by Rimrock he was not lacking in attentions of a kind, and so one evening as the West-bound train was due Mary found herself waiting for him in the ladies' balcony. This oriental retreat, giving them a view of the lobby without exposing them to the rough talk of the men, was common ground for the women of the hotel, and as she looked over the railing Mary was distinctly conscious of the chic Mrs. Jepson, sitting near. Mrs. Jepson, as the wife of the Tecolote Superintendent, was in a social class by herself and, even after Mary's startling rise to a directorship in the Company, Mrs. Jepson still thought of her as a typist. Still a certain feeling of loyalty to her husband, and a natural fear for his job, had prompted Mrs. Jepson, in so far as possible, to overlook this mere accident of occupation. And behind her too-sweet smile there was another motive--her woman's curiosity was piqued. Not only did this deaf girl, this ordinary typist, hold the fate of her husband in her hand, but she could, if she wished, marry Rimrock Jones himself and become the wife of a millionaire. And yet she did not do it. This was out of the ordinary, even in Mrs. Jepson's stratum of society, and so she watched her, discreetly.