Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/46

 To do him justice, while the idea appealed to his vanity, even inflamed him, it gave him no particular pleasure. For the first time in his reckless life he gave serious thought to his relationship with a girl and decided to let her alone. One morning she went to the barn, to find the chestnut gelding ready and Bill saddling his own top horse. She looked around but Tom was not in sight.

"Isn't Mr. McNair coming?"

"Well, no," said Bill. "Tom's gone up to the Reservation for a few days asarep. Saunders has started to round up."

She said nothing, rode dutifully with Bill, dutifully admired a small herd of yearlings, might have been sitting at home for all she saw, and came back with a headache which she blamed on the blazing August sun. It lasted for four days, that headache, which was the exact period of Tom's absence. And it deceived her father and her mother, but it never fooled Herbert.

"Care to ride with me tonight, Kay?"

"I think not, if you don't mind. I don't feel very well."

Or perhaps she would weary of excuses and go with him, only to be very quiet and silent, and not really brighten until they neared the ranch again.

It was a bad time for Herbert, that four days. The books were in fair order by that time, even if the results were worse than Henry Dowling had anticipated. Herbert had more time to himself, and found to his dismay that time was all he did have; that Kay had slipped away into some world of dreams and enchantment where he could not follow her. He would, if he could, have snatched her away from it, have ordered the Mariposa, sitting in the broiling heat on its side-track at Ursula, onto the road again. Or have sent McNair away, to drift South or to hell itself, so far as Herbert was concerned. But as the days went on, and Tom came back, and still no mention of departure was made, he began to despair.

The truth is that Henry Dowling was enjoying himself after his own heavy fashion. He had swallowed his loss, and the resulting mental dyspepsia was not as bad as he had expected; and after all he need not keep the ranch. He could