Graham indeed went the way of the rest of the camp. His progress from indifference to love he could not have traced himself, although he might with tolerable accuracy have indicated the landmarks--a look, a gesture, a flash of spirit, revealing by a little more the woman whom he finally came to idealize. That her's was a rich nature he had early discovered. That it was not inherently a frivolous or vicious nature, he saw only gradually, and after many days. Then his self-disguise of philosophic indifference fell. He realized fully that he loved her, not for what she did or said, but for herself; and with the knowledge came an acuter consciousness that, whatever her possibilities, her tendency was now to pervert rather than develop them. For the first time he opened his eyes and examined her environment as well as herself. She spent half of her day alone with Cheyenne Harry. The other half she was restless. The evening she passed in the Little Nugget saloon, where the men, convinced that she was now the mistress of Cheyenne Harry, took even less pains than formerly to restrain the accustomed freedom of their words and actions. Graham viewed her indifference to all this, and her growing absorption by Cheyenne Harry, with some alarm. He conceived that the state of affairs came about more because of a dormant moral nature than because of moral perversity; and as to this he was partly right. But he could not fail to perceive the inevitable trend of it all, no matter what the permitting motive. He would have been less--or more--than human, if he had let it pass without a protest. At first the protest took the form of action. He tried to persuade the girl to spend the evening in other ways. While the novelty lasted, this was all very well. He epitomized and peptonized his knowledge on all subjects to suit her intellectual digestion. They called it their "lesson time," and he made the mistake of taking it too seriously. He was very much in earnest himself, so he thought she should be so. They talked of nothing but the matter in hand. After a little, there came an evening when she was a trifle tired. The matter in hand did not interest her as much as it should. She leaned the back of her head against her two clasped hands, and sighed. "I'm stupid to-night," she confessed. "Let's talk. Tell me a story." Graham was much in love, and so incapable of readjustments. He had thought out carefully several new and interesting things to say. "I thought you said you were really in earnest about this," he reproached her. "If you are going to improve yourself, you must work; and work cannot depend on one's mood." All of which was very true, but Jack Graham could not see that there inheres in truth no imperative demand for its expression. But when another night came, her enthusiasm was less marked, for she saw no escape. After a time she skipped an evening. Then at last she gave it up altogether.