She stood for a long time with her forehead resting on her folded arms which lay upon the top rail of the corral. The big 'bus horses shoved her gently with their soft muzzles, impatient to be noticed, but she did not lift her head until a step upon the hard-trodden yard roused her from her apathy of dull misery. She glanced around indifferently to see old Edouard Dubois lumbering toward her in the fast gathering dusk. Dubois's self-conscious, ingratiating smile did not fade because she drew her arched eyebrows together in a slight frown. It took more than an unwelcoming face to divert the obstinate old Frenchman from any purpose firmly fixed in his mind. "Ha--I am ver' glad to find you alone, Mees Teesdale, I lak have leetle talk with you." There was a purposeful look behind his set smile of agreeableness. She shrank from him a little as he came close to her, but he appeared not to notice the movement, and went on-- "I hear you are in trouble--eh? I hear you get fire from ze hotel?" Again the girl's face took on its new look of bitterness. That was the way in which they were expressing it, spreading the news throughout the town. They were losing no time--her friends. "'Fired' is the word when a biscuit-shooter is dismissed," she returned coldly. "I hear you get lef' by that loafer, too. I tole you, mam'selle, that fellow Van Lennop no good. I know that kind, I see that kind before, Mees Teesdale. Lak every pretty girl an' have good time, then 'pouf!--zat is all!" She turned upon him hotly, her face a mixture of humiliation and angry resentment. "You can't criticise him to me, Mr. Dubois! I won't listen. If I have been fool enough to misunderstand his kindness that's my fault, not his." Dubois's eyes became suddenly inscrutable. After a moment's silence he said quietly-- "You love heem, I think. Zat iss too bad for you. What you do now, Mees Teesdale? Where you go?" He saw that her clasped hands tightened at the question, though she replied calmly-- "I don't know, not yet." "Perhaps you marry me, mam'selle? I ask you once--I haf not change my mind." She stared at him with a kind of terror in her eyes. Was _this_ her way out! Was this the place that somewhere in the world she had declared defiantly was meant for her? Was it the purpose of the Fates to crowd her down and out--until she was glad to fill it--a punishment for her ambitions--for daring to believe she was intended for some other life than this? Upon that previous occasion when the old Frenchman had made her the offer of marriage which had seemed so grotesque and impossible at the time, he had asserted in his pique, "You might be glad to marry old Edouard Dubois some day," and she had turned her back upon him in light contempt--now she was, not glad, she could never be that, but grateful. "But I--don't love you." Her voice sounded strained and hoarse.