settled down to doze. The afternoon waned and the shadows lengthened across the road and the mountains darkened. In town, Curly manipulated the bus through the narrow streets and stopped before the Palace of the Governors, now a museum.

“We stop here to see the Museum,” Gin shouted through the bus. “Indian relics and paintings and the chair Lew Wallace wrote ‘Ben Hur’ in. Afterwards we walk back to the hotel.”

“Good-bye,” said Blake suddenly, and climbed out. Off across the Plaza he sprinted; he could be seen intercepting Teddy Madden just as he was going into the drug store. Gin looked after them and wondered if Teddy had made any attempt to call her that morning. Perhaps she had better call him and remind him that they had a date. He was so forgetful. Mechanically she ushered the dudes into the Palace, then to the first room on the right.

“Now, here we have a model of the place we saw yesterday. See, here’s the ruined church....”

But if she called Teddy, Harvey would answer the phone and might think that she had called to speak to him. Had she a good enough excuse for calling Teddy? Was she justified in assuming that they were good enough friends? Oh, to hell with that. There was no reason why she shouldn’t call him.

“This is the Frijoles room. Frijoles is one of the places we have for private tours. It is very lovely and very famous: it’s all excavated. We take it in one-day trips or two: there’s a hotel with cabins for rooms. It’s most interesting. It has cave-dwellings similar to what we saw today, but they’re in the walls of the canyon instead of being on a cliff. There’s a little model of the kiva; see, like the ceremonial cave we saw today.”

With a guilty feeling, she came back to the business in hand and listened to herself talking like a Victrola. That was no way to act. One must put oneself over. Mr. Butts was looking at the pictures on the walls with a thoughtful eye, a competitive eye. She smiled at him, glowing with all the force of her personality.

“I’ll tell you what effect that has on me, Mr. Butts,” she said confidentially. “When I stand there in that canyon I get the queerest feeling.” It was true, that was the worst of all, she thought. The idea of telling him! “When I’m there I can’t help feeling that the people who used to live in those caves are still there, in a way. They’re being very quiet, and looking at me.” She paused and stared at him with wide eyes. “It’s silly of me, isn’t it?”

Yes, she had him. He looked down at her and thought about Frijoles and the dead cave-dwellers, and he looked at her again and thought of the lost ages when men were men, and of the ladder he had climbed today, and of the letter he could write home about it. She knew it. She had him.

“You do?” he asked, and there was actually a kindly glint in that fishy eye. “So that’s how it makes you feel, does it?”

He rubbed his chin. He looked at her and saw her as a person instead of a courier, a person who had watched him climb that ladder. There would be no letter to the company. She had him.

“Well, well, well,” he said jovially. “Well well well.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Madden boy was worried about his laundry. It was a week late, he couldn’t remember who was doing it for him, and besides he was having one of those moods that made him worry about little things. It was not so much the tragic lack of socks, he told Harvey Todd, but there were three shirts in it that belonged to Bob Stuart.

“I hate not returning people’s clothes,” he said. “I hate wearing them in the first place but this time I couldn’t help it. It’s maddening.”

Harvey never rose to the heights of hysteria, and this time he was almost phlegmatic. “It’ll be along,” he said. “Don’t forget, some of it was mine. I’ll help you yell when the time comes. Jesus, I’m late.” He slammed down his cup on the table, between a broken tumbler and an eggy plate, and hurried out of the door, carrying his hat.

“Canaille,” said Teddy humorously. “Cochon,” he added into the mirror, scowling fiercely.

“Señor?” asked a tremulous voice at the door. A little girl held out a huge bundle as he opened the screen. “Eighty-four cents,” she said. “My mother says she can’t find one sock. She send tomorrow.”

“Oh, yes? Well, tell her I’ll pay then.”

“Si, señor.” There was boredom and cynicism in her tone as she turned away. Teddy’s eyes narrowed; he thought of challenging her, but what was there to say? He shrugged and forgot it, sitting by the table and looking vacantly at the unopened bundle. The sun crept up his leg and his kneecap began to prickle pleasantly under the linen trousers. He sat still until the bundle blurred and moved gently out of itself, projecting a phantom bundle an inch away from its own crisp outlines, hovering a little above the shining top of the table on which it had lain. He dreamed; a good picture like this, with the checkered table-cloth and the spots of sunlight.... A fly bit him savagely on the ankle and he stood up.

The picture waiting for him must be finished today or he would hate himself. Last night he should not have stopped after working up to it all day. Had he gone on, it might have been really good. Could he ever do anything really good? Why couldn’t he get immersed, and forget people and money and his own fading flesh? He looked at the easel and felt that he would never see it as it should be; he almost wept from exasperation. There were so many interruptions. There was his own careless incompetence, and his eternal itching to see people and to have people love him, and there was money. Money.... A familiar panic began to rise. He seized a brush and set to work.

It wouldn’t go. He moved about distractedly, trying to clean up the room. The dirty plates were piled up in the sink; he made a few dabs at them and changed his mind. He looked apathetically at the stiff spotted table-cloth and hung up a leather coat that had slipped from its nail. Then he caught a glimpse of the painting from a new angle; a real feeling of interest persuaded him to get to work again.

Another hour was coaxed out of eternity. The sun crept farther into the warm house; out in the street was a growing rush of motorcars and sometimes a clatter of hoofs; the tap in the sink dripped with a cheerful chiming splash on the tumbled china. He whistled and painted. Beginning to feel cramped, he took a short walk around the room, keeping a wary eye on the canvas as if it might take flight with his spasm of energy. It was clear again; he saw just what he wanted and perhaps he could do it. But not just now.

“Stale,” he said aloud to his conscience, and his voice sounded choked and rusty in the empty room. He would do something else for awhile. Shave? The idea of putting on water to heat seemed impossible. Wait till later; plenty of water at Bob’s. He leaned to the mirror and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, wondering how he would look with a beard. Bob wouldn’t like it. That reminded him of the shirts and he untied the laundry, sorting it out and hesitating sometimes, sock in hand, between the two piles of segregated underwear, his own and Harvey’s. He always gave himself the benefit of the hesitation. But it meant nothing: Harvey would ravage his store at the first necessity.

The work impulse was quite dead. He felt relieved, as though he had flung a small morsel into the maw of his conscience, but otherwise there was no twinge of energy. He tied up Bob’s shirts and put the last unbroken record on the rickety little Victrola, borrowed one evening from Gin and still unreturned. They needed records: the Lennards had good records. Blake kept up pretty well; he probably just walked into a place and bought up everything. Pretty soft for him.

Well, one could make out by snuggling up to the big houses, riding in their cars and going to their parties and drinking their