Despite his desire to be with her he saw her seldom. The mining town offered few opportunities for meetings, which, however innocent they might be, were more agreeable if they took place in the seclusion of parks and quiet byways than on the crowded sidewalks of the populous streets. There were no wooded lanes for man and maid to loiter in, no plazas with benches in sheltered corners. In its hand-to-hand fight against elemental forces the town had no time to make concessions to the delicately debatable diversions of social life. It only recognized a love that was honestly licit or frankly illicit. A few hurried visits at the Murchison mansion in the late afternoon when the Colonel was known to be busy at the office and Allen was still down town, were the only times that Jerry had been able to have speech with her. These interviews had at first been presided over by an outward seeming of that coolly polite friendship of which Jerry liked to talk. The conversation avoided all questions of sentiment as the man and woman seemed to avoid the proximity one of the other, sitting drawn apart with averted eyes, talking of impersonal matters. But as his holdings advanced in value, as he saw himself day by day loosening the bonds that bound him to his employers, his wife, a society of which he was weary, his restraint was relaxed. His words grew less fluent, his pose of friend changed to that of the man on whose conversation moments of silence fall while he looks with ardent eyes on a down-drooped face. June made a last desperate stand, tried with despairing struggles to draw back from the fate closing around her. Even now she did not realize how close she was to the edge of the precipice. But Jerry did. He knew they were standing on its brink. One evening, early in September, June and the Colonel were sitting together at dinner in the dining-room of the Murchison mansion. Allen had gone to San Francisco for a week, and the Colonel was to dine with June every evening till his return. He spent as much of his time as possible with the young girl in these lonely days. Even Mitty Sullivan and the baby were away, having gone to Lake Tahoe for two months. Thus the one house to which June could constantly go and be cheered by the society of a woman friend was closed to her.