"I couldn't presume to cross swords with you, Major," he remarked, on a quiet note of contempt. "Your experience is as extensive as my own is limited; and you have the good luck to be popular. I have not. But that is simply a question of _metier_. Yours is to flatter women, even behind their backs; whilst I am blockhead enough to speak the truth about them, even to their faces. And the last thing a normal woman wants from any man is--the truth." From that moment Garth had hardened his heart. And now--a week later--as he rode down from the Crow's Nest, he chuckled to himself over the satisfactory way in which Lenox was playing into his hands by adopting an attitude that would plainly act as a foil to his own deferentially persistent courtship; a metaphorical walking round the walls of Jericho, that must end in capitulation, soon or late. From his point of view, Quita's unique position of personal freedom, coupled with legal bondage, added a distinct flavour to the whole affair: and so well pleased was he with the aspect of things in general, that, before reaching Potrain, he headed his pony up another corkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow. Here he spent a couple of hours, lounging in the drawing-room of one of the lesser lights in his firmament, flattering her by a delicately conveyed impression that he found her the only woman in the station worth talking to. And so, home to his own well-appointed house, where, two hours after an irreproachable dinner, he slept the sleep of the man whose conscience has been trained not to make inconvenient remarks. CHAPTER VII. "God uses us to help each other so, Lending our lives out." --Browning. Before May was out Honor met her unpromising acquaintance several times, by chance. But nothing beyond formal greetings passed between them. Twice she happened to be riding alone with Lenox; the third time, her husband was with them: and on every occasion Quita's companion was James Garth,--the only one among them all who enjoyed the situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her unspoken intimation _au pied de la lettre_, steeled himself to half-cynical, half-stoical endurance.