It was as though she had gathered three armies and hurled them at him. From the centre she attacked with indifference, striving to draw his attention from other points. She massed two distinct flanking movements stealthily. Upon one side she brought to bear upon a keen brain a brain as keen; upon the other she calmly deployed the charm of her regal beauty. The man had seemed a machine, emotionless. But since he was human, since blood, Hume blood though it was, ran through his veins, he must have emotions like other men. They might be hidden, they might be of stunted, pale growth. In one case she would uncover them, in another she would develop. Already she admired him as a vital, compelling force. She would make him admire a similar force In her; she would make him admire the physical perfection of her. She was a woman, she was amply endowed with brain and instinct and beauty. And she was far too shrewd to overlook a single weapon which lay at her hand. The eternal looms were weaving, the warp of her being, the woof of his being were drawn into the intricate pattern of human destiny. Smiles and tears, hopes and fears, emotions of which a man is unconscious, ambitions and failures, achievements--all go into the invisible fabric. Already Sledge Hume and Helga Strawn had come to find something to admire in each other. The short sight of a clever man and a clever woman could not discern what lay at the end. And the end was rushing upon them with tremendous speed. CHAPTER XXIV UNDER THE SURFACE Early in January there arrived in El Toyon a gentleman with a scrubbing brush moustache, a pleasant, portly personality, a pair of twinkling black eyes, a seemingly limitless amount of leisure, discriminating taste for liquors and cigars, a fountain pen and a check book. The name he wrote upon the hotel register was Edward Kinsell. He disabused the mind of the proprietor, Charlie Granger, by assuring him that he was not a drummer. In his genial way he was quite ready to tell all about himself. He was an old bachelor, counting upon becoming the husband of a great little woman just as soon as the courts had disposed of the present incumbent. He had been rolling down the rocky trail at a pretty swift gait in town, and his doctor had warned him that the lady In question would have been set free and would no doubt have chosen and elected another life partner before Mr. Kinsell found his way to the church unless he took up the simple life.