“I sent for you to congratulate you,” she answered, with a smile. “You are a bigger man than I thought. You have done what you said you would do, and I presume you can very shortly go out of mourning.” He radiated vanity, seemed to visibly expand “Do y’u go in when I go out?” he asked brutally. She laughed lightly. “Hardly. But it does seem as if I’m unlucky in my foremen. They all seem to have engagements across the divide.” “I’ll get y u another.” “Thank you. I was going to ask as much of you. Can you suggest one now?” “I’m a right good cattle man myself.” “And—can you stay with me a reasonable time?” He laughed. “I have no engagements across the Styx, ma’am.” “My other foremen thought _they_ were permanent fixtures here, too.” “We’re all liable to mistakes.” “Even you, I suppose.” “I’ll sign a lease to give y’u possession of my skill for as long as y’u like.” She settled herself comfortably back in an easy chair, as alluring a picture of buoyant, radiant youth as he had seen in many a day. “But the terms. I am afraid I can’t offer you as much as you make at your present occupation.” “I could keep that up as a side-line.” “So you could. But if you use my time for your own profit, you ought to pay me a royalty on your intake.” His eyes lit with laughter. “I reckon that can be arranged. Any percentage you think fair It will all be in the family, anyway.” “I think that is one of the things about which we don’t agree,” she made answer softly, flashing him the proper look of inviting disdain from under her silken lashes. He leaned forward, elbow on the chair-arm and chin in hand. “We’ll agree about it one of these days.” “Think so?” she returned airily. “I don’t think. I know.” Just an eyebeat her gaze met his, with that hint of shy questioning, of puzzled doubt that showed a growing interest. “I wonder,” she murmured, and recovered herself with a hurried little laugh. How she hated her task, and him! She was a singularly honest woman, but she must play the siren; must allure this scoundrel to forgetfulness, and yet elude the very familiarity her manner invited. She knew her part, the heartless enticing coquette, compounded half of passion and half of selfishness. It was a hateful thing to do, this sacrifice of her personal reticence, of the individual abstraction in which she wrapped herself as a cloak, in order to hint at a possibility of some intimacy of feeling between them. She shrank from it with a repugnance hardly to be overcome, but she held herself with an iron will and consummate art to the role she had undertaken. Two lives hung on her success. She must not forget that. She would not let herself forget that—and one of them that of the man she loved.