After he had gone, Louise walked restlessly up and down, her nerves strung to the highest tension by her love and anxiety for Bancroft and her hatred of Conrad. Her headache grew rapidly worse, and her heart was beating like a trip-hammer. She and Lucy agreed that the electrical condition of the atmosphere had become more trying. The sunshine, too, was more dingily yellowish. They noticed that heavy, dark clouds, like huge, sleeping beasts, were lying behind the summits of the Mogollon Mountains. "My head is throbbing so I can hardly see," said Louise finally, "and I think I'll go to my room, pull down the shades, and lie down for a while. No; thank you, dear, you can't do anything. Just leave me alone for an hour or two in the quiet and the dark." Lucy sat on the veranda with the magazine and the box of candy her father had brought; but one lay unopened in her lap and the other untouched on the table beside her, while her eyes wandered across the tree-embowered streets of the town and far over the plain, where, beyond the horizon, were the green groves of the Socorro Springs ranch. "I've got to do it," she whispered to herself, decision in her wrinkling brow. "There's no other way, and I must. Daddy is looking wretched--I've never seen him look so anxious and disturbed as he does to-day. I've got to do it, right away." She had not seen Curtis Conrad since the barbecue. Daily had she watched for him, hoping always to see him climbing the hill, longing greatly to look upon his face, and feeling that she must reveal her secret and so put an end, as she firmly believed she could, to her father's trouble. But he came not; instead, Homer's visits increased in length and frequency, and she, still hurt and angered by the memory of Curtis's attentions to Mrs. Ned Castleton at the barbecue, recklessly continued her flirtation with Homer, plunging him more and more deeply in love. She did all this without thought of what was going on in Homer's breast, wishing only to dull the pain in her own aching heart. Finally, when she realized what was happening, she changed her demeanor in sudden girl-panic, only to precipitate the young man's proposal, by which she had been both surprised and vexed.