On his ear again fell the cold politeness of the voice. Gamaliel Barron was too lacking in any form of self-consciousness, was too indifferently confident of himself as a Westerner, the equal of any and all human creatures, to experience that sensation of _mauvaise honte_ that men of smaller fiber are apt to feel in the presence of beings of superior polish. Polish was nothing to him. The man everything. And it seemed to him he had seen the man, deep down, in that one startled moment of encounter in the hall. Thoughtfully smoking and tilting back in his chair, he mentally summed him up in the two words, “bad egg.” He would keep his eye on him, and to do so would put off the trip to the mines he was to take in the course of the next two weeks. The next morning Mariposa’s appearance at the breakfast table roused the uneasiness he felt to poignant anxiety. With the keenness of growing love, he realized that it was the mind that was disturbed more than the body. He came home to lunch--an unusual deviation, as he almost invariably lunched down town at the Lick House--and found her at the table as pale and distrait as ever. After the meal was over he followed her into the hall. She was slowly ascending the stairs, one hand on the balustrade, her long, black dress sliding upward from stair to stair. He followed her noiselessly, and at the top of the flight, turning to go to her room, she saw him and paused, her hand still touching the rail. “Miss Moreau,” he said, “you’re tired out--too tired to teach. Let me go and put off your pupils. I’ve a lot of spare time this afternoon.” “How kind of you,” she said, looking faintly surprised; “I haven’t any this afternoon, luckily. I don’t work every day; that’s the point I’m trying to work up to; that’s my highest ambition.” She looked down at his upturned face and gave a slight smile. “_Is_ it overwork that kept you awake last night and makes you look so pale to-day?” he queried in a lowered voice. “Oh, I don’t know,”--she turned away her face rather impatiently,--“I’m worried, I suppose. Everybody has to be worried, don’t they?” “I can’t bear to have you worried. There isn’t one wild, crazy thing in the world I wouldn’t do to prevent it.” He was looking up at her with his soul in his eyes. Barron was not the man to hide or juggle with his love. It possessed him now and shone on his face. Mariposa’s eyes turned from it as from the scrutiny of something at once painful and holy. He laid his hand on hers on the rail. “You know that,” he said, his deep voice shaken. Her eyes dropped to the hands and she mechanically noticed how white her fingers looked between his large, brown ones. She drew them softly away, feeling his glance keen, impassioned and unwavering on her face.