DOLORES had been gone an hour before Webster roused from his bitter introspection sufficiently to glance at his watch. “Hum-m-m!” he grunted disapprovingly.

“Oh, I've been here fully half an hour,” Dolores's voice assured him. He turned guiltily and found her leaning against the jamb in a doorway behind him and farther down the veranda. She was gazing at him with that calm, impersonal yet vitally interested glance that had so captivated him the first time he saw her.

“Well, then”—bluntly—“why didn't you say so?”

“The surest way to get oneself disliked is to intrude on the moods of one's friends. Moreover, I wanted to study you in repose. Are you quite finished talking to yourself and fighting imaginary enemies? If so, you might talk to me for a change; I'll even disagree with you on any subject, if opposition will make you any happier.”

He rose and indicated the chair. “Please sit down, Miss Ruey. You are altogether disconcerting—too confoundedly smart. I fear I'm going to be afraid of you until I know you better.”

She shrugged adorably and took the proffered chair. “That's the Latin in her—that shrug,” Webster thought. “I wonder what other mixtures go to make up that perfect whole.”

Aloud he said: “So you wanted to study me in repose? Why waste your time? I am never in repose.”

“Feminine curiosity, Mr. Webster. Billy has talked so much of you that I wanted to see if you measured up to the specifications.”

“I don't mind your looking at me, Miss Ruey, but I get fidgety when you look through me.” He was glad he said that, because it made her laugh—more immoderately, Webster thought, than the circumstances demanded. Nevertheless he had an insane desire to make her laugh like that again, to watch her mobile features run the gamut from sweet, nunlike repose to mirthful riot.

“I can't help it—really,” she protested. “You're so transparent.”

Mr. Webster reflected that doubtless she was right. Men in his fix generally were pitifully obvious. Nevertheless he was nettled. “Oh, I'm not so sure of that. I was just accusing myself of being a bonehead, and bone is opaque.”

“Perhaps I have an X-ray eye,” she replied demurely. “However, just to show you how easy you are to read, I'll not look at your silly head. Just let me have your hand, and I'll tell you all about yourself.”

“Is there any charge?”

“Yes, a nominal one. However, I guarantee a truthful reading; if, when I am through, you are not wholly satisfied, you do not have to pay the price. Is that a satisfactory arrangement?”

“Right as a fox,” he declared, and held out his great calloused hand. He thrilled as she took it in both of hers, so soft and beautiful, and flattened it out, palm upward, on her knee. “A fine, large, useful hand,” she commented musingly. “The callouses indicate recent hard manual toil with a pick land shovel; despite your recent efforts with soap and brush and pumice-stone, there still remain evidences of some foreign matter ingrained in those callous spots. While, of course, I cannot be certain of my diagnosis without a magnifying glass, I venture the conjecture that it is a mineral substance, and your hands are so tanned one can readily see you have been working in the sun—in a very hot sun, as a matter of fact. Inasmuch as the hottest sun I ever felt was in Death Valley, as I crossed it on the train last month, your hand tells me you have been there.

“The general structure of the hand indicates that you are of a peace-loving disposition, but are far from being a peace-at-any-price advocate.” She flipped his hand over suddenly. “Ah, the knuckles confirm that last statement. They tell me you will fight on provocation; while your fingers are still stiff and thick from your recent severe labours, nevertheless they indicate an artistic nature, from which I deduce that upon the occasion when you were in conflict last your opponent received a most artistic thrashing.”

Webster twitched nervously. “Skip the coarse side of my nature,” he pleaded, “and tell me something nice about myself.”

“I am coming to that. This line indicates that you are very brave, gentle, and courteous. You are quick and firm in your decisions, but not always right, because your actions are governed by your heart instead of your head. Once you have made a decision, you are reckless of the consequences. Your lifeline tells me you are close to fifty-three years of age——”

“Seeress, you're shooting high and to the right,” he interrupted, for he did not relish that jab about his age. “I'll have you know I was forty years old last month, and that I can still do a hundred yards in twelve seconds flat—in my working clothes.”

“Well, don't feel peeved about it, Mr. Webster. I am not infallible; the best you can hope for from me is a high percentage of hits, even if I did shoot high and to the right that time. In point of worldly experience you're a hundred and six years old but I lopped off fifty per cent, to be on the safe side. To continue: You are of an extremely chivalrous nature—particularly toward young ladies travelling without chaperons; you are kind, affectionate, generous to a fault, something of a spendthrift. You will always be a millionaire or a pauper, never anything between—at least for any great length of time.”

“You've been talking to that callow Bill Geary.” Mr. Webster's face was so red he was sensible of a distinct feeling of relief that she kept her face bent over his hand.

“I haven't. He's been talking to me. One may safely depend upon you to do the unexpected. Your matrimonial line is unbroken, proving you have never married, although right here the line is somewhat dim and frayed.” She looked up at him suddenly. “You haven't been in love, have you?” she queried with childlike insouciance. “In love—and disappointed?”

He nodded, for he could not trust himself to speak.

“How sad!” she cooed sympathetically. “Did she marry another, or did she die?”

“She—she—yes, she died.”

“Cauliflower-tongue, in all probability, carried her off, poor thing! However, to your fortune: You are naturally truthful and would not make a deliberate misstatement of fact unless you had a very potent reason for it. You are sensitive to ridicule; it irks you to be teased, particularly by a woman, although you would boil in oil rather than admit it. You never ask impertinent questions, and you dislike those who do; you are not inquisitive; you never question other people's motives unless they appear to have a distinct bearing on your happiness or prosperity; you resent it when anybody questions your motives, and anybody who knows your nature will not question them. However, you have a strong sense of sportsmanship, and when fairly defeated, whether in a battle of fists or a battle of wits, you never hold a grudge, which is one of the very nicest characteristics a man can have——”

“Or a woman,” he suggested feebly.

“Quite right. Few woman have a sense of sportsmanship.”

“You have.”

“How do you know?”

“The witness declines to answer, on the ground that he might incriminate himself; also I object to the question because it is irrelevant, immaterial, and not cross-examination.”

“Accepted. You stand a very good chance of becoming a millionaire in Sobrante, but you must beware of a dark man who has crossed your path——”

“Which one?” Webster queried mirthfully. “All coons look alike to me—Greasers also.”

“Mere patter of our profession, Mr. Webster,” she admitted, “tossed in to build up the mystery element and simulate wisdom. Fortune awaited you in the United States, but you put it behind you, at the call of friendship, for a fortune in Sobrante. Now you have reconsidered that foolish action and at this moment you are contemplating sending a cablegram to a fat old man who waddles when he walks, recalling your decision not to accept a certain proposition of a business nature. However, you are too late. The fat old man with the waddle has made other arrangements, and if you want to make money, you'll remain in Sobrante. I think that is all, Mr. Webster.” He was gazing at her with an expression composed of equal parts of awe, amazement, consternation, adoration, and blank stupidity.

“Well,” she queried innocently, “to quote Billy's colloquial style: did I put it over?”

“You did very well for an amateur, but I'm a doubting Thomas. I have to poke my finger into the wound, so to speak, before I'll believe. About this fat old man who waddles when he walks: a really topnotch palmist could tell me his name.”

“Well, I'm only an amateur, but still I think I might, to quote Billy again, make a stab at it. A little while ago you said I had a strong sense of sportsmanship. Do you care to bet me about ten dollars I cannot give you the fat party's initials—all three of them?”

He gazed at her owlishly. She was the most perfectly amazing girl he had ever met; he was certain she would win the ten dollars from him, but then it was worth ten dollars to know for a certainty whether she was perfect or possessed of a slight flaw; so he silently drew forth a wallet that would have choked a cow and skinned off a ten-dollar gold certificate of the United States of America.

“I'm game,” he mumbled. “To quote Billy again: 'Put up or shut up.'”

“The fat gentleman's initials are E. P. J.”

“By the twelve apostles, Peter, Simon——”

“Don't blaspheme, Mr. Webster.”

He stood up and shook himself. “When you order the tea,” he said very distinctly, “please have mine cold. I need a bracer after that. Take the ten. You've won it.”

“Thanks ever so much,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone and tucked the bill inside of her shirtwaist. “I am a very poor woman and—'Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more,'” she carolled, swaying her lithe, beautiful body and snapping her fingers like a cabaret dancer.

He could have groaned with the futility of his overwhelming desire for her; it even occurred to him what a shame it was to waste a marvel like her on a callow young pup like Billy, who had fought so many deadly skirmishes with Dan Cupid that a post-impressionistic painting of the Geary heart must resemble a pincushion. Then he remembered that this was an ungenerous, a traitorous thought, and that he had not paid the lady her fee.

“Well, what's the tariff?” he asked.

“You really feel that I have earned a professional's fee?”

“Beyond a doubt.”

She stood a moment gazing thoughtfully down at the tip of her little toe, struggling to be quite cool and collected in the knowledge that she was about to do a daring, almost a brazen thing—wondering with a queer, panicky little fluttering of her heart if he would think any the less of her for it.

“Well—I—that is——”

“The cauliflower ear is not unknown among pugilists in our own dear native land, but the cauliflower tongue appears to blossom exclusively in Sobrante,” he suggested wickedly.

She bit her lips to repress a smile. “Since you have taken Billy away from me this evening, I shall make you take Billy's place this evening. After dinner you shall hire an open victoria with two little white horses and drive me around the Malecon. There is a band concert to-night.”

“If it's the last act of my wicked life!” he promised fervently. Strange to relate, in that ecstatic moment no thought of Billy Geary marred the perfect serenity of what promised to be the most perfectly serene night in history.