Ruth was in the grip of one of the swift friendships to which she was subject. She liked Larry a lot. They had many common interests. But she plunged into her little affair with him only because misery made her reckless. Quite well she knew that Larry’s coaxing smile, his dancing eyes, his boyish winsomeness, cloaked a purpose of making love to her as much as he dared. She felt no resentment on that account. Indeed she was grateful to him for distracting her from her woe. To her husband she owed nothing. If she could hurt him by playing his own game so much the better. For conventions she never cared. As for Larry, when the time came, she told herself, she would know how to protect her heart. She was willing to flirt desperately with him, but she had no intention of really caring for him. Because she was such a child of impulse, so candid and so frank, Rowan worried lest her indiscretions should be noticed. He did not like to interfere, but he considered dropping a hint to Larry that he was needed at the Open A N C. It was not necessary. Over the telephone one morning came the news that Miss Morgan, who was still stopping at the Dude Ranch, had suffered a relapse and was not expected to live. Ruth fled at once to join her and Larry discovered a few hours later that he was well enough to go home. As Ruth nursed her aunt through the silent hours of the night her mind was busy with her own shattered romance. She confessed to herself that she had not really been having a good time with Larry. She had turned to him as an escape and to punish her husband. But all the while her heart had been full of bitterness and desolation. It was unthinkable that Rowan could have treated her so. Her young, clean pride had been dreadfully humiliated. It seemed to her that her heart was frozen, that she never again could pulse with warm life. The thing that had fallen upon her was a degradation. In her thoughts she held herself soiled irretrievably. Miss Morgan died the third day after the arrival of her niece. In accord with a desire she had once expressed, she was buried in a grove back of the pasture at the ranch. Ruth accepted the invitation of Mrs. Flanders to stay a few days at the Dude Ranch as her guest. The days lengthened into weeks, and still she did not return to the Circle Diamond. Larry made occasions to come to the hotel to see Ruth. Sometimes Rowan came, but not often. The gulf between him and his young wife had widened until he despaired of bridging it. He felt that the kindest thing he could do was to stay away. The whole passionate urge of his heart swept him toward her, but his iron will schooled his impulses to obedience. But as Rowan rode the range he carried with him the memory of a white face, fragile as a flower, out of which dark eyes looked at him defiantly. His heart ached for her. In his own breast he carried a block of ice that never melted, but he would gladly have taken her grief, too, if that had been possible.