Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places Gregory St. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, who entered the social melee without enthusiasm, but with dogged determination to let the world see that the disappearance of Bill Carmody affected her not at all. She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused and offered a welcome diversion for her thoughts. She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far places in the picturing of a man--her man--big, and strong, and clean; fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and alone conquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right to her love. Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blue eyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickering firelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go in short stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the rounded bosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness of it. But there were other times--times when the dancing wall-shadows were dark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widened eyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man--battered, broken, helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes--a beaten man drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from his standards--and from her. At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold, bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a pallid death mask of despair. Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knew him--the bigness of him--the relentless dynamic man-power of his being, she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure--no median line of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the good nor the bad among men. Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and passive virtues became the jest of the gods; but a man who in the final accounting would stand four-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of their right or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward. The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months--empty months to the heart of the girl who waited, dreading, yet hoping for word from the man she loved. Yet knowing, deep down in her heart, she would hear no word. He would come to her--would answer the call of her great love--would beat down the barriers and in the flush of victory would claim her as his own; or, in the everlasting silence of the weird realm of missing men, be lost to her forever. Daily she scanned the newspapers. Not front pages whose glaring headlines flaunted world-rumblings, politics, and the illness of rich men's dogs, but tiny cable-whispers from places far from the beaten track, places forgotten or unknown, whose very names breathed mystery; whispers that hinted briefly of life-tragedies, of action and the unsung deeds of men. And as she read, she mused.