During the year that preceded her marriage to Donald Rogers, Edith had seen a great deal of Billy West, and had liked him more than anyone except herself had realized. His was a personality, indeed, to compel the admiration of women. Tall, good-looking, of a reckless and laughter-loving type, he naturally appealed to that peculiar chord in the feminine make-up which responds so readily to the Cavalier in the opposite sex, while paying scant attention to the sturdy adherence to duty characteristic of his Roundhead adversary. For this reason, it is probable that, at one period of Donald’s courtship, she would have listened more kindly to the love-making of his friend, had the latter, indeed, seen fit to make any. That he did not was due to no Quixotic sense of friendship for Donald, but to a very real and honest belief on his part that marriage on the slender pay of an assistant chemist was not for one of his type, an opinion in After eight years of married life, Edith Rogers, busy with her child, her household cares and the various complexities of domesticity, had forgotten her husband’s friend as completely as though he had never come into her life at all. He, on the contrary, had thought of her continually, for his life in the West had been too keenly devoted to business to leave either time or opportunity for dalliance with the opposite sex. Hence the memory of his first and last love had not been effaced by the passage of time, but remained in his heart as a sweet and pleasing memory, gathering increased strength from the years as they rolled swiftly by. It should not be Mrs. Rogers had not been apprised of her husband’s intention to bring a guest home for dinner, least of all so unexpected a one as Billy West. The reason for this was that the Rogers’ apartment boasted no telephone. The servant problem they had solved by the simple expedient of not keeping any. Hence it was that West’s first glimpse of the Edith of his dreams was of a tired little woman, flushed from her efforts over the gas range, and in no sweet temper with her husband for having taken her unawares and at such a disadvantage. It is a fact worthy of record, however, that West found her, in this homely garb, more humanly delightful and attractive than would have been the case had she spent hours of preparation at her toilette table. He “Billy!” Mrs. Rogers had gasped as she came into the room to greet her husband on his arrival, and had thus, by using the old familiar title, established a footing between them that somehow refused to return to the more formal one of “Mrs. Rogers” and “Mr. West.” After all it was of no great importance—Billy and Edith they had always been to each other, and Billy and Edith they remained. Donald, if he noticed it at all, was glad of the fact that his wife and his old friend liked each other so well. The meeting became a little reunion, in the pleasure of which Mrs. Rogers soon forgot her plain, cheap house-gown and her flushed face, and entered into the spirit of the occasion with an unwonted gayety. She was a beautiful woman, in spite of her twenty-eight years; perhaps it would be more correct to say because of them, for while at twenty she had been exceedingly pretty, it was little more than Her grandmother had been a Southern woman, and a noted beauty in those much talked of days “before the war,” and whether this lady’s beauty had, as time passed, taken on added glory, like most other things of that hallowed period, certain it is that Edith Rogers had received from some source a priceless inheritance as far as the perfection of her figure or the beauty of her coloring was concerned. Perhaps it was some forgotten strain of Irish blood that was responsible for her deep violet eyes and her dark chestnut hair, although her dusky complexion belied it. West observed the change which the years had made in her, at once, and complimented her on it. “I have never seen you look so well,” he said, as he grasped her hand. “You were a rosebud when I went away, now you are an American beauty.” It pleased her mightily, for she felt that he meant it, and, like most married women, she heard few compliments from her husband. Mrs. Pope, her mother, never lost an opportunity to tell her that with her looks she could have married any man she pleased, but she paid no attention to remarks of this nature, She knew from West’s voice that he was very glad to see her, and after all these years, when he grasped her hand, and pressed it in his strong, firm grip, she felt the old familiar shock, the sensation of gladness for she knew not what, that almost took her breath away. It had always been that way with him. He was very different from Donald in many ways, for, while Donald was serious and earnest and very conscientious, West was always merry and gay and careless, never seeming to worry about money, although his income, at the time of her marriage, had been smaller even than Donald’s. There was something about him that always attracted women. She felt this whenever she was with him, yet it did not come from any appreciation of his character, or his mind, for she knew very little about either. There was some sort of psychic magnetism about the man, some vibrating sense of physical vitality, which she felt whenever she was near him. His mere presence made her strangely silent and in a way afraid, yet, whatever it was He looked at her, in that curiously intimate way he had, and even his smile made her happy. She felt his glance sweep over her face, her whole body, and almost embrace her in its pleasant radiance—it thrilled her, yet she almost resented the way in which it left her helpless and confused. In a moment he had looked beyond her, at Donald, and was making some laughing inquiry about their boy—and then she felt sorry and wanted him to look at her again. Mrs. Pope had taught her daughters many things, but cooking was not one of them. Edith had been forced, like many another married woman, to learn Donald, with a father’s pride in his boy, dug out Bobbie from the recesses of his mother’s room, and brought him to West to be admired. He was a manly little fellow, with a large share of his mother’s good looks, and West took him upon his knee, wondering inwardly if he would ever have a son of his own to inherit his newly acquired fortune. To the boy he told stories about the Indians that It was when dinner had progressed to the stage of the salad that Donald mentioned the matter of West’s sudden rise to fortune. “Billy had made a ten-strike in the West,” he remarked to his wife. “Discovered a gold mine.” “Really!” Edith laughed. “Is there any gold in it? Almost all the gold mines I ever heard of were lacking in that important particular.” “This one wasn’t.” Donald looked at West and laughed. “Billy tells me it’s made him worth half a million.” Mrs. Rogers gasped, then turned to her guest. “You are not in earnest?” she inquired wonderingly. “Half a million?” “About that,” said West, trying to look as if he were speaking of the price of a new hat, or something equally unimportant. “But you—you don’t seem a bit excited about it, or anything.” Mrs. Rogers’ own eyes were big with interest. “I should think you would be simply “I was excited enough when I found it,” remarked West with a chuckle. “It came like a snowstorm in August. Last thing in the world I had expected—at least just then.” “I suppose you just stood up and shouted,” said his hostess. “No, I didn’t. I lit my pipe. I didn’t want the rest of the bunch to know about it.” “Tell us the whole story.” She was as interested as a child. Half a million dollars sounded like such a vast amount of money. All her life she had imagined what she would do if she were only rich. She had often thought it all out, in her day dreams—how she would give her mother so much for the trip to Europe that she was always talking about, and her sister so much more for the diamond necklace she wanted, and have an automobile and a place at the seashore and many other things. She had an exalted opinion of wealth and its possibilities; if she had known any wealthy people she would probably “There isn’t much to tell. I was on my vacation at the time, and there were about a dozen of us, camping up on the Little Ash river. There hadn’t been any gold found in that section, before that, but I was always looking out for it—you see I had studied the formation up that way the summer before, and I was certain the rock was there. The boys used to make a good deal of fun of me, poking about with my geologist’s hammer, instead of fishing or the like. It was the last day of our stay, I remember, and we had already begun to get our things together, in readiness to break camp in the morning. I had strolled up the river a few hundred yards, feeling a little disappointed at going back to Denver without even a piece of iron pyrites, when I noticed a sort of whitish streak in the rocky bank just a little above where it rose from the edge of the river. It was mostly covered with underbrush and “And then you knew?” she asked eagerly. “Yes. I staked out my claim very quietly. Of course I gave up my position the next day. After I had had the claim registered, I went to see a man in Denver that I had come to know pretty well—he was the representative of a wealthy crowd in Boston who dealt extensively in mining properties, and I She began to see, that very evening, something of what it meant to have so much money that it was not necessary to think about how one spent it. When West suggested, after dinner, that they all go to the theater, she said at once that it was too late—that they would never be able to get tickets at that hour. It was then close to eight o’clock, but West laughed, and said he would see to the tickets, so she put on her hat and they went. When Donald and she went to the theater, which was not very often, they used to think about it for days ahead and were delighted if they were able to get good seats in the balcony at less than the prices charged downstairs. Their evening was a delightful one. They whirled down-town to the theater in a taxicab, and went to supper afterwards at one of the best-known restaurants, where Edith wondered how the countless array of young and very beautiful women managed to get such gorgeous gowns and such magnificent jewelry. She and Donald did not often patronize such places. They came home in a whirl of excitement, and Edith lay awake a long time after she had gone to bed, wondering if after all her mother had not been right in urging her to marry for money. She looked at Donald, who lay at her side, and thought long, long thoughts. She was not conscious of any disloyalty to him—she liked Donald very much—he seemed almost like a dear friend. Presently she began to try to analyze her love for him, her marriage, and her after life. She respected and admired his mind, his character, but was there not, |