Ever since then Catalina had been the chief object of his week-end journeys, and his hunting largely an excuse. She had completed this life which he led in the mountains, and which was so pleasantly different from his life in town. For a part of the week he was a poor, young lawyer, watchful, worried, careful; then for a couple of days he was a ragged young Mexican and the lover of Catalina—a different man. He was the product of a transition, and two beings warred in him. In town he was dominated by the desire to be like the Americans, and to gain a foothold in their life of law, greed and respectability; in the mountains he relapsed unconsciously into the easy barbarous ways of his fathers. Incidentally, this periodical change of personality was refreshing and a source of strength. Catalina had been an important part of it.… As he lay now sleepily puffing a last cigarette, he wondered why it was that he had suddenly lost interest in the girl. CHAPTER VI At ten o’clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office of James B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did after one of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures into another environment about what some men get out of sprees—a complete change of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were now completely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creeping back into his consciousness. But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he could not account for it. And then he remembered the girl—the one he had seen on the train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though the thought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and now suddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to a quick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He was to ’phone first. Maybe she would be alone.… In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, and she herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such a dainty bit of fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strange little crinkled mouth. “I’m awfully glad you came,” she told him. (Her gladness was always awful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tall emaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her so carefully on the train.