"Not from any line you have ever written," she retorted. "Alicia Ford told me, otherwise I shouldn't have known." "Still, you came. Why? Were you curious?" "Why should I be curious, and what about?--the Red Desert? I've seen deserts before." "I thought you might be curious to know what disposition the Red Desert was making of such a failure as I am," he said evenly. "I can forgive that more easily than I can forgive your bringing of the other man along to be an on-looker." "Herbert, you mean? He is a good boy, a nice boy--and perfectly harmless. You'll like him immensely when you come to know him better." "You like him?" he queried. "How can you ask--when you have just called him 'the other man'?" Lidgerwood turned in his chair and faced her squarely. "Eleanor, I had my punishment over a year ago, and I have been hoping you would let it suffice. It was hard enough to lose you without being compelled to stand by and see another man win you. Can't you understand that?" She did not answer him. Instead, she whipped aside from that phase of the subject to ask a question of her own. "What ever made you come out here, Howard?" "To the superintendency of the Red Butte Western? You did." "I?" "Yes, you." "It is ridiculous!" "It is true." "Prove it--if you can; but you can't." "I am proving it day by day, or trying to. I didn't want to come, but you drove me to it." "I decline to take any such hideous responsibility," she laughed lightly. "There must have been some better reason; Miss Dawson, perhaps." "Quite likely, barring the small fact that I didn't know there was a Miss Dawson until I had been a month in Angels." "Oh!" she said half spitefully. And then, with calculated malice, "Howard, if you were only as brave as you are clever!... Why can't you be a man and strike back now and then?" "Strike back at the woman I love? I'm not quite down to that, I hope, even if I was once too cowardly to strike for her." "Always _that!_ Why won't you let me forget?" "Because you must not forget. Listen: two weeks ago--only two weeks ago--one of the Angels--er--peacemakers stood up in his place and shot at me. What I did made me understand that I had gained nothing in a year." "Shot at you?" she echoed, and now he might have discovered a note of real concern in her tone if his ear had been attuned to hear it. "Tell me about it. Who was it? and why did he shoot at you?" His answer seemed to be indirection itself. "How long do you expect to stay in Angels and its vicinity?" he asked. "I don't know. This is partly a pleasure trip for us younger folk. Father was coming out alone, and I--that is, mamma decided to come and make a car-party of it. We may stay two or three weeks, if the others wish it. But you haven't answered me. I want to know who the man was, and why he shot at you."