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 her respectable hat before the mirror. She stood there for a moment, staring at her reflection in the glass.

"Ranching sure ages a woman," she said. "It's all right for the men; it keeps them young. But for a woman"

The bureau stood between the two windows, and she glanced out casually. Then her eyes narrowed, and going to one of them she jerked down the green shade with what amounted to violence.

"Somebody over there on Dicer's second floor, rubber-necking," she said tartly. "You'd better watch your windows. There's a lot of curious people in the world."

Kay, at the window after she had gone, watched her sail across the street below and into the Emporium, later to emerge still angrily flushed, and stalk down the street.

Like Bob Allison's visit, that puzzled her.

The few callers were almost the only breaks in the monotony of those early days. Tom's absences continued. Alone she read the local paper over and over:

"For sale, one Poland China male hog. Nellie Smith."

"Notice: we will trade flour for wheat. Fort Lumber Company."

And when Tom came back at night, after what she guessed was a fruitless day, it would be to eat little in the hot dining room below and then go early to bed, lying she knew wide-eyed in the darkness beside her long after she had found refuge in sleep, withdrawn into some unhappy retreat of his own where he apparently neither needed nor wanted her.

Yet he loved her. She was sure of that. Not after her own fashion, which still made her breathless when she heard his halting step outside the door, but in a queer, alternately violent and humble, way of his own. He would quarrel with her, generally over some matter of his sensitive pride, and then make his peace with a passion that startled her. One such difference was typical. The suit she had worn away with her was threadbare and none too cool. One day she suggested writing to Nora for some clothes. He had drawn her down onto his knee, but now he pushed her away and stood up.

"What clothes?"