The inside of that room was a revelation to Johnny Dice. Never before had he been face to face with feminine daintiness of this sort. From the chintz curtains and colorful cretonnes to the array of mysterious articles spread about him this room was as different from the rest of the house as day is from night. Something sang in Johnny’s heart as he reached out to place his gift on Molly’s dresser and found himself gazing at his own picture in a neat little frame hung to one side of the girl’s large mirror. The picture was an old-fashioned studio photograph portraying the subject in one of his saddest and most miserable moments. Johnny’s pride had long since forced him to destroy the copy he had kept for himself. But there it was in her room! The world suddenly became a paradise. Even on Johnny the day had not been wasted. He smiled sheepishly on catching sight of his own reflection in the glass. He began to ask himself important questions. Between Molly and him there had never passed a word beyond the province of friendship. She was a rich man’s daughter, and forty a month is no inducement to hold out to young ladies of her means. And then, too, it didn’t lead to steady employment if one made eyes at owners’ daughters. There were some social barriers even in Nevada. Now, that he was leaving, matters matured very rapidly in the boy’s mind. What sort of a fool had he been all these years not to have known that he was over his head, that Molly Kent meant more to him than any other being who had come into his life? An hour ago he had told himself he was blue because he was leaving the country and the Diamond-Bar behind. That was a lie! Own up to it, now. It wasn’t the Diamond-Bar or the purple shadows on the Tuscaroras that he was going to miss. No! It was Molly Kent! And Molly? Johnny’s teeth clenched under his tightly pressed lips as he gazed once more on that picture of himself. “She don’t hate me, at least,” he murmured half aloud. “Who’d ever thought she’d ’a’ kept that thing all these years? Why—and there’s those little silver spurs I brung her when she was just a kid. Real silver, they was, too.” Johnny put his hand on them tenderly. He seemed to have difficulty in breathing. Emotion was welling up in him to a point which made him reel. The mouth organ was placed on the bureau. He wanted to get outside, to think, to tell himself that he had not been dreaming, that life still went on.