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258 method would do as long as it took her from Grey Wolf.

It happened in the next afternoon that Dick found the fat German who had bought Robison's land in the bar, and he stayed so long talking to him of possibilities concerning the Canada Home-lot Extension Company, which, as Dick warmly hoped, were now finding themselves baffled along this line of extension, that he had no time to spare for Andree. And it was the first day he had been in the hotel that week, too, for he had been chasing a defaulting freighter along the Moon-Dance trail. He went out at last by the back passage, and there Andree stood waiting for him; half-defiant, half-piteous. He took her face between his hands, and her strange, lawless beauty unsteadied him as it had done more than once or twice of late.

"I will not have you come and not come to me, Dick," she said. "You must speak with me. You must."

"Do you think I let a girl say must to me, Andree?" He laughed a little, but he did not move his eyes from her face. "What have you got that red thing round your head for? You look like a Bacchante—or a bit like the Fornarina."

Andree did not know what they were. But she knew how to meet the unwilling admiration in Dick's eyes. Very softly she drew the lids shut with her fingers. Then she said:

"Your looking does go through me. And I do not understand. And your eyes do hurt, some days. And some days Tempest does make his eyes hurt me too. Why?"

Dick's opportunities offered often enough. But he would not take them. He would not take this one.

"How should I know? Let me open my eyes and see if they'll hurt you this time. Now, what do they say to you?"

He was half-laughing, and yet idly curious. And he was not sure that he wanted those eyes interpreted fully just now.

Andree looked, drawing her delicate brows into a line. Then she pulled his face forward.