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BEATRICE CORLISS, accomplished business woman, had discovered with something of a start that life was not so simple a matter of dollars and cents as she had long imagined. On the other hand, it was a troublesomely complicated affair and brought times when one did not know just exactly how to take it. Life was something like that man Bill Steele! when it appeared merely frivolling it might have serious intent, when it posed at gravity it might be making mock of her.

The occasion had come for the first time in her life when she could not say clear thoughtedly: "I want this and I don't want that; I will have this and I won't have that!" She found herself flinging about restlessly in her own boudoir, amazing her maid until Beatrice remembered her and sent her away.

She had been deeply thoughtful, she would have said, as she and Joe Embry rode back from Camp Corliss to the ranch house. He, too, had appeared thoughtful; now she wondered if he had "got anywhere." She knew that she hadn't. … Then, when at last they had come to the house, Embry had spoken for the second time of his love for her. Or of his desire to marry her? Of course he meant the two to be inseparable conditions, and yet the impression he had made more ​emphatically was the latter. And again she had sent him away hastily and with no sensible answer.

"Like a little fool!" she told herself with a sniff of self-contempt.

But Joe Embry would come a third time, and then she must tell him one thing or the other. And now she found herself involved in perplexities. She had liked Joe Embry, she still liked him, more than any other man she had ever known. She held to that stubbornly. But Joe Embry as a friend and Joe Embry as a husband were different matters. Why? She didn't understand. But she felt more and more distinctly that for her to give herself to him as the woman gives when she marries was unthinkable. Why, why and why? There was no reason for it; he was of her class, her station, her "sort." And yet a little involuntary shudder went through her when she thought of herself standing at this man's side, pledging herself to him.

"I suppose," she pondered somewhat wearily, "it's just that I don't love him and that love does count, after all."

And she found herself thinking, with reddening, finally flaming cheeks of Bill Steele. He had made love to her too, he in his insufferably impudent way. It was just as though he had told her: "I'm rather busy just now, but when I can get the time for it I'll run in and carry you off with me." From this point, cooling slowly as emotion gave place to speculation, she contrasted the two men. … Both were masterful, each in his way. Yet the mastery of Joe Embry was laid aside in her presence, he called her his dear lady, ​he humbly asked to serve, while Bill Steele made fun of her, set his big bulk stubbornly athwart her horizon and dictated. Was there some sense, after all, in that idiotic theory about woman's nature craving something of the plain man-brute in her mate? For though Beatrice persisted both in "thoroughly detesting and despising" Bill Steele, yet he inspired no such shudder as did Embry.

"I'd like to see Joe Embry grind him down into the dust!" she cried passionately. … And with the cry came vivid remembrance of the scene before her eyes when Steele and Embry had stood face to face menacingly, and from the troubled depths of her soul there had risen the hot desire to see the man she hated beat down the man she was so near marrying.

If Steele had come into her life in another manner, if he had been respectful in his attitude like others, quietly courteous to her. … But she couldn't even imagine it; he could not be Steele and be other in his attitude than he was. And, looking under the brusque impertinence of him, was there really disrespect?

It struck her that never before had it been so difficult a matter to keep her mind clearly in its logical groove, to move methodically from point to point until she achieved perfect clarity of vision. Now she found that she was remembering that day with Steele at the Goblet, recalling every detail of their meeting, going repeatedly over trifles over which she had gone repeatedly before. The making of the biscuits. … They were good biscuits, too, despite his banter, and he had enjoyed their crisp brown crusts as well as she! … the ​enhance holding of hands across the water. …

"Sentimental little idiot!"

She jerked herself up and refused to follow seductive memory further in this direction. She was not sentimental, she had never been, she was never going to be. That settled it! … She hadn't looked like a boy and she knew it; he just said that to cover the real look in his eyes. But she had seen it and had remembered it and had understood. He approved of her, deep down in that rollicking heart of his, he very much approved of her. In fact, he wanted to marry her; she knew that, too. If she could only marry Joe Embry … just to punish Bill Steele. …

Again the shudder. If she married Embry it would be just on Steele's account and …

"I'll marry neither one of them!" whispered Beatrice, as though she scarcely dared take even herself into her confidence, so unsure of herself was she today. "I don't have to, and I won't."

Which, could Bill Steele have heard, would have satisfied him for the present. But she had no intention that he should know anything whatever about her plans. Let him go on, if he liked, thinking that he could have her one day when he came for her. If she could just continue to make him care for her more and more and then, in the ripeness of time, laugh at him and send him away …

"He wouldn't go," she thought ruefully, "He's the most persistent man and the most hateful I ever knew!"

Today, such an uncertain grip did she have on life, she even asked herself the question: "Just why do ​I hate Bill Steele?" And as definite an answer as she could discover was that she hated him because she had made up her mind that first disagreeable day to hate him. Another persistent "Why?" Because he had teased her and she was not accustomed to being teased; because he who was a nobody, not satisfied with playing at the equal of her who was a Somebody, actually disported himself as her superior. Was he that? He had found the way to snatch the Goblet land away from her though she defied him; he had remained there and pushed his work steadily ahead though she sought to impede him; he had learned what she had been blind to, namely, the altered railroad plans; he had seemed to have the best of what he called a merry war between them; he had manifested certain unmistakable signs of ability. Next thing he would make a success in Indian Valley with a town which he and no other had built; he would have made another success with Bear Town. Probably he would make a success at the Goblet with whatever he was doing there. Had he the right to treat her as a little girl whose experience was, after all, restricted? If the man wasn't so … so Bill-Steele-ish! … she could actually admire him. An admission made reluctantly, covered immediately by considerations which threw weighty discredit on him: chief among them the ugly fact that he maintained such evil, rowdy places as the saloon and gambling house in Summit City. But was that really his? He had named Joe Embry a liar for the report … it would be more like Steele, if he did own these places, to boast of it cheerfully. Certainly, he was no hypocrite. …

​But Embry had assured her that surmise on the matter had passed to certainty, that Steele was the man from whom Flash Truitt took his orders, to whom Flash Truitt paid over the moneys which came in to him. Somebody lied; was it Steele? was it Embry?

"Joe Embry is my friend," she maintained stoutly. "And he is a gentleman."

But the upshot of the whole interview between Beatrice Corliss and herself was that, while she hated Bill Steele most heartily and despised him, still Embry made her shudder and … Bill Steele didn't!

"I am not going to marry anybody … ever!" said Beatrice. "I don't have to."