As they walked back to their camp Jennie took her brother's arm:

"What is it, George?"

"I must return to the agency."

"That means we must all go?"

"I suppose so. The settlers seemed determined to make trouble. They have had another row with Gray Man's band, and shots have been fired. Fortunately no one was hurt. We must leave here early. Say nothing to any of our guests till we are safely on the way home."

Elsie, walking with Lawson, was very pensive. "I begin to understand why Captain Curtis is made Indian agent. He understands these people, sympathizes with them."

"No one better, and if the department can retain him six years he will have the Tetongs comfortably housed and on the road to independence and self-respect."

"Why shouldn't he be retained?"

"Well, your father may secure re-election to the Senate next winter."

"I know," she softly answered, "he dislikes Captain Curtis."

"More than that—in order to be elected, he must pledge himself to have Curtis put out o' the way."

"That sounds like murder," she said.

"Oh no; it's only politics—politics and business. But let's not talk of that—let us absorb the beauty of the night. Did you enjoy the dance?"

"Very much. I am hopeless of ever painting it though—it is so full of big, significant shadows. I wish I knew more about it."

"You are less confident than you were last year." He looked at her slyly.

"I see more."

"And feel more?" he asked.

"Yes—I'm afraid I'm getting Captain Curtis's point of view. These people aren't the mendicants they once seemed. The expression of some of those faces to-night was wonderful. They are something more than tramps when they discard their rags."

"I wish you'd come to my point of view," he said, a little irrelevantly.

"About what?"

"About our momentous day. Suppose we say Wednesday of Thanksgiving week?"

"I thought you were going to wait for me to speak," she replied.

He caught his breath a little. "So I will—only you won't forget my gray hairs, will you?"

"I don't think I will—not with your broad daily hints to remind me. But you promised to be patient and—just friendly."

He ignored her sarcasm. "It would be rather curious if I should become increasingly impatient, wouldn't it? I made that promise in entire good faith, but—I seem to be changing."

"That's what troubles me," she said. "You are trying to hurry me."

At this moment they came close to the Parkers and she did not continue. He had given her another disturbing thought to sleep on, and that was, "Would it hurt him much if I should now return his ring?"

Mrs. Parker was disposed to discuss the dance, but Jennie said:

"We must all go to sleep. George says we are to move early to-morrow."

The walls of the tent could hardly be seen when the sound of the crackling flames again told that faithful Two Horns was feeding the camp-fire. Crane's Voice could be heard bringing in the horses, and in a few moments Curtis called out in a low, incisive voice:

"Everybody turn out; we must make an early start across the range."

The morning was gray, the peaks hidden in clouds, and the wind chill as the women came from their beds. Two Horns had stretched some blankets to keep off the blast, but still Elsie shivered, and Curtis roundly apologized. "I'm sorry to get you up so early. It spoils all the fun of camping if you're obliged to rise before the sun. An hour from now and all will be genial. Please wait for my explanation."

Breakfast was eaten in discomfort and comparative silence, though Parker, with intent to enliven the scene, cut a few capers as awkward as the antics of a sand-hill crane. Almost before the smoke of the tepee fires began to climb the trees the agent and his party started back over the divide towards the mill, no one in holiday mood. There was a certain pathos in this loss of good cheer.

Once out of sight of the camp, Curtis turned and said: "Friends, I'm sorry to announce it, but I must return to the agency to-night and I must take you all with me. Wilson has asked me to hasten home, and of course he would not do so without good reason."

"What is the matter?" asked Elsie.

"The same old trouble. The cattlemen are throwing their stock on the reservation and the Tetongs are resenting it."

"No danger, I hope," said Parker, pop-eyed this time with genuine apprehension.

"Oh no—not if I am on hand to keep the races apart. Now I'm going to drive hard, and you must all hang on. I want to pull into the agency before dark."

The wagon lurched and rattled down the divide as Curtis urged the horses steadily forward. With his foot in the brake, he descended in a single hour the road which had consumed three long hours to climb. Conversation under these conditions was difficult and at times impossible.

Jennie, intrepid driver herself, clutched her brother's arm at times, as the vehicle lurched, but Curtis made it all a joke by shouting, "It is always easy to slide into Hades—the worst is soon over."

Once in the valley of the Elk the road grew better, and Curtis asked Elsie if she wished to drive. She, being very self-conscious for some reason, shook her head, "No, thank you," and rode for the most part in silence, though Lawson made a brave effort to keep up a conversation.

By eleven o'clock not even Curtis and Lawson together could make the ride a joke. The women were hungry and tired, and distinctly saddened by this sudden ending of their joyous outing.

"I wish these rampant cowboys could have waited till we had our holiday," Jennie grumbled, as she stretched her tired arms.

"Probably they were informed of the Captain's plans and seized the opportunity," suggested Parker.

"I wonder if Cal is a traitor?" mused Jennie.

Two Horns and Crane's Voice came rattling along soon after Curtis stopped for noon at their first camping-place, and in a few minutes lunch was ready. Conversation still lagged in spite of inspiriting coffee, and the women lay out on their rugs and blankets, resting their aching bones, while the men smoked and speculated on the outcome of the whole Indian question.

The teams were put to the wagons as soon as their oats were eaten and the homeward drive begun, brisk and business-like, and for some mysterious reason Curtis recovered his usual cheerful tone.

It was mid-afternoon when the agency was sighted, and the five-o'clock bell had just rung as they drove slowly and with no appearance of haste into the yard.

Wilson came out to meet them. "How-de-do? You made a short trip."

"How are things?" inquired Curtis.

"Nothing doing—all quiet," replied the clerk, but Curtis detected something yet untold in the quiver of his clerk's eyelid.

"Well, I'm glad we got in."

Supper was eaten with little ceremony and very languid conversation, and the artists at once sought their rooms to rest. The Parkers were too tired to be nervous, and Curtis was absorbed with some private problem.

As Lawson and Elsie walked across the square in the twilight he announced, meditatively:

"I'm going to be more and more impatient—that is now certain."

"Osborne, don't! Please don't take that tone; I don't like it."

"Why not, dear?" he asked, tenderly.

"Because—because—" She turned in a swift, overmastering impulse. "Because if you do, I must give you back your ring." She wrung it from her finger. "I think I must, anyhow."

As she crowded the gem into his lax hand he said: "Why, what does this mean, Elsie Bee Bee?" His voice expressed pain and bewilderment.

"I don't know what it means yet, only I feel that it isn't right now to wear it. I told you when you put it on that it implied no promise on my part."

"I know it, and it doesn't imply any now."

"Yes, it does. Your whole attitude towards me implies an absolute engagement, and I can't rest under that. Take back your ring till I can receive it as other girls do—as a binding promise. You must do this or I will hate you!" she added, with a sudden fury.

"Why, certainly, dearest—only I don't see what has produced this change in you."

"I have not changed—you have changed."

He laughed at this. "The woman's last word! Well, I admit it. I have come to love you as a man loves the woman he wishes to make his wife. I'm going to care a great deal, Elsie Bee Bee, if you do not come to me some time."

"Don't say that!" she cried, and there was an imploring accent in her voice. "Don't you see I must not wear your ring till I promise all you ask?"

They walked on in silence to the door. As they stood there he said: "I feel as though I were about to say good-bye to you forever, and it makes my heart ache."

She put both hands on his shoulders, then, swift as a bird, turned and was gone. He felt that she had thought to kiss him, but he divined it would have been a farewell kiss, and he was glad that she had turned away. There was still hope for him in that indecision.

As for Elsie, life seemed suddenly less simple and less orderly. She pitied Osborne, she was angry and dissatisfied with herself, and in doubt about Curtis. "I'm not in love with him—it is impossible, absurd; but my summer is spoiled. I shall go home at once. It is foolish for me to be here when I could be at the sea-shore."

After a moment she thought: "Why am I here? I guess the girls were right. I am a crank—an irresponsible. Why should I want to paint these malodorous tepee dwellers? Just to be different from any one else."

As she sat at her open window she heard again the Tetong lover's flute wailing from the hill-side across the stream, and the sound struck straight in upon her heart and filled her with a mysterious longing—a pain which she dared not analyze. Her mind was active to the point of confusion—seething with doubts and the wreckage of her opinions. Lawson's action had deeply disturbed her.

They had never pretended to sentiment in their relationship; indeed, she had settled into a conviction that love was a silly passion, possible only to girls in their teens. This belief she had attained by passing through what seemed to her a fiery furnace of suffering at eighteen, and when that self-effacing passion had burned itself out she had renounced love and marriage and "devoted herself to art," healing herself with work. For some years thereafter she posed as a man-hater.

The objective cause of all this tumult and flame and renunciation seemed ridiculously inadequate in the eyes of others. He was the private secretary of Senator Stollwaert at the time, a smug, discreet, pretty man, of slender attainment and no great ambition. Happily, he had afterwards removed to New York, or Washington would have been an impossible place of residence for Elsie. She had met him once since her return—he had had the courage to call upon her—and the familiar pose of his small head and the mincing stride of his slender legs had given her a feeling of nausea. "Is it possible that I once agonized over this trig little man?" she asked herself.

To be just to him, Mr. Garretson did not presume in the least on his previous intimacy; on the contrary, he seemed timid and ill at ease in the presence of the woman whose beauty had by no means been foreshadowed in her girlhood. He was not stupid; the splendor of her surroundings awed him, but above all else there was a look on her face which too plainly expressed contempt for her ancient folly. Her shame was as perceptible to him as though expressed in spoken words, and his visit was never repeated.

Of this affair Elsie had spoken quite freely to Lawson. "It only shows what an unmitigated idiot a girl is. She is bound to love some one. I knew quantities of nice boys, and why I should have selected poor Sammy as the centre of all my hopes and affections I don't know. I dimly recall thinking he had nice ears and hands, but even they do not now seem a reasonable basis for wild passion, do they?"

Lawson had been amused. "Love at that age isn't a creature of reason."

"Evidently not, if mine was a sample."

"Ours now is so reasonable as to seem insecure and dangerous."

Her intimacy with Lawson, therefore, had begun on the plane of good-fellowship while they were in Paris together, and for two years he seemed quite satisfied. Of late he had been less contained.

After her outburst of anger at her father's ejectment of Curtis, she met Lawson with a certain reserve not common to her. At the moment, she more than half resolved that the time had come to leave her father's house for Lawson's flat, and yet her will wavered. She said as little as possible to him concerning that last disgraceful scene, as much on her own account as to spare Curtis, but her restlessness was apparent to Lawson and puzzled him. Two or three times during the summer he had openly, though jocularly, alluded to their marriage, but she had put him off with a keen word. Now that her father seemed intolerable, she listened to him with a new interest. He became a definite possibility—a refuge.

Encouraged by this slight change in her attitude towards him, Lawson took a ring from his pocket one night and said, "I wish you'd wear this, Elsie Bee Bee."

She drew back. "I can't do that. I'm not ready to promise anything yet."

"It needn't bind you," he pleaded. "It needn't mean any more than you care to have it mean. But I think our understanding justifies a ring."

"That's just it," she answered, quickly. "I don't like you to be so solemn about our 'understanding.' You promised to let me think it all out in my own way and in my own time."

"I know I did—and I mean to do so. Only"—he smiled with a wistful look at her—"I would have you observe that I have developed three gray hairs over my ears."

She took the ring slowly, and as she put the tip of her finger into it a slight premonitory shudder passed over her.

"You are sure you understand—this is no binding promise on my part?"

"It will leave you as free as before."

"Then I will wear it," she said, and slipped it to its place. "It is a beautiful ring."

He bent and kissed her fingers. "And a beautiful hand, Elsie Bee Bee."

Now, lying alone in the soundless deep of the night, she went over that scene, and the one through which she had just passed. "He's a dear, good fellow, and I love him—but not like that." And the thought that it was all over between them, and the decision irrevocably made, was at once a pain and a pleasure. The promise, slight as it was, had been a burden. "Now I am absolutely free," she said, in swift, exultant rebound.