"All over and I've won out, Flossie! Whew! Three months ago things looked so squally, I couldn't even write. If I'd gone under, I'd just have quietly dropped out, and, Kid, you'd never known what had hit me! But, bless the luck, I'm It! Clear the tracks for me! I'm coming East with the bells on! Listen! Six thousand eight hundred fifty-two dollars in the bank, salted away. Prospects, sixteen karat fine. Got a cracker-jack proposition; six cinematograph shows, one-fifth interest. In a year, Flossie, it's a gasoline buggy for you! I'm beating it to you, hot-foot. One stop in Des Moines to pick up some easy money, and me for the gay White Way! Watch for me about March fourteenth. Say, we're going to be rich, and don't you forget it! It's all for you, bless your pretty eyes! Do I love you? Well, say! I'm sitting up, talking to your little photo, foolish as a kid! I'm daffy about you. If you're still strong for Josh, why, set the date. Go the limit on the clothes--the best isn't too good for you! Don't keep me waiting, and don't go for to tease me, honey, for my heart's been true to you! "JOSH. "P. S. If you've got any foolish thinks in your sassy head that you care for any cane-bearing dude, dismiss them! You don't! Sweep the porch and cut the hammock-strings. Don't fool yourself one minute--we're the team!" She gave a cry of horror. The worst had come! The past was rising up to claim her, stretching out its cruel tentacles to drag her back, as it had done to Winona. How could she escape him? What could she say to him, after all these months of weak postponement? If only she could stop him by a letter or a telegram! But there was no address. All she knew was that somewhere, out on the cold brown sky-line, he was hurrying toward her, resolute, confident, a terribly earnest lover. All that night, in the midst of hideous dreams, where Brennon pursued her with his vindictive grin, she had the feeling of something advancing over the horizon, black, swelling like a tornado, roaring toward her, obscuring everything with its expanding darkness. CHAPTER XXVII