"They certainly are quick to take the stranger in," she commented lightly. Something in her tone arrested Keith's attention, and he stopped fussing at his keys. Nan had meant little by the remark. It had expressed the vague instinctive recoil of the woman brought up in rather conventional circumstances and in a conservative community from too sudden intimacy, nothing more. She did not herself understand this. "Don't you like the Sherwoods?" he instantly demanded, with the masculine insistence on dissecting every butterfly. "Why, she's charming!" said Nan, opening her eyes in surprise. "Of course, I like her immensely!" "I should think so," grumbled Keith. "They certainly have been mighty good to us." But Nan had dropped her negligée about her feet, and was convulsed at the figure made of her slim young body by the distorted mirror. "Come here, Milt," she gasped. She clung to him, gurgling with laughter, pointing one shaking finger at the monstrosity in the glass. "Look--look what you married!" They dressed gayly. His optimism and enthusiasm boiled over again. It was a shame, his leaving her all that afternoon, he reiterated; but she had no idea what giant strides he had made. He told her of the city, and he enumerated some of the acquaintances he had made--Calhoun Bennett, Bert Taylor, Major Marmaduke Miles, Michael Rowlee, Judge Caldwell, and others. They had been most cordial to him, most kind; they had taken him in without delay. "It's the spirit of the West, Nan," he cried, "hospitable, unsuspicious, free, eager to welcome! Oh, this is going to be the place for me; opportunity waits at every corner. They are not tied down by conventions, by the way somebody else has done things--" He went on rapidly to detail to her some of the things he had been told--the contemplated public improvements, the levelling of the sand hills, the building of a city out of nothing. "Why, Nan, do you realize that only four years ago this very Plaza had only six small buildings around it, that there were only three two-story structures in town, that the population was only about five hundred--there are thirty-five thousand now, that--" he rattled on, detailing his recently acquired statistics. Oh, potent influence of the Western spirit--already, eight hours after his landing on California's shores, Milton Keith was a "booster." With an expansion of relief that only a woman could fully appreciate, Nan unpacked and put on a frock that had nothing whatever to do with the sea voyage, and which she had not for some time seen. In ordinary accustomed circumstances she would never have thought of donning so elaborate a toilette for a hotel dining-room, but she was yielding to reaction. In her way she was "celebrating," just as was Keith. Her hair she did low after the fashion of the time, and bound it to her brow by a bandeau of pearls. The gown itself was pale green and filmy. It lent her a flowerlike semblance that was very fresh and lovely.