"And HELL, Jim, isn't a nice word----"

"Gee, Kid, now look here--can't get along with out HELL--leave me that one just a little while."

She shook her head.

"No."

"No?"

"And PUNK is expressive, but not suited to parlor use."

"All right--t'ell with PUNK!" He turned and looked. "What's the matter now?" he asked.

"Don't you realize what you've just said?"

"What did I say?"

She turned away to hide a tear.

He threw his arms around her neck and drew her lips down to his.

"Ah, don't worry, Kiddo--I'll do better next time. Honest to God, I will. That's enough for today. Just let's love now. T'ell with the rest."

She smiled in answer.

"You promise to try honestly?"

He raised his hand in solemn vow.

"S'help me!"

Each day's trial ended in a laugh and a kiss until at last Jim refused to promise any more. He grinned in obstinate, good-natured silence and let her do the worrying.

She watched him with growing wonder and alarm. He gradually lapsed into little coarse, ugly habits at the table. She tried playfully to correct them. He took it good-naturedly at first and then ignored her suggestions as if she were a kitten complaining at his feet.

She studied him with baffling rage at the mystery of his personality.

The long silences between them grew from hour to hour. She could see that he was restless now at the isolation of their sand-island home. The queer lights and shadows that played in his cold blue eyes told only too plainly that his mind was back again in the world of battle. He was fighting something, too.

She was glad of it. She could manage him better there. She would throw him into the company of educated people and rouse his pride and ambition. She heard his announcement of their departure on the eighth day with positive joy.

"Well, Kiddo," he began briskly, "we've got to be moving. Time to get back to work now. The old town and the little shop down in Avenue B have been calling me."

"Today, Jim?" she asked quickly.

"Right away. We'll catch the first train north, stop two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas, in Asheville, and then for old New York!"

The journey along the new railroad built on concrete bridges over miles of beautiful waters was one of unalloyed joy. They had passed over this stretch of marvelous engineering at night on their trip down and had not realized its wonders. For hours the train seemed to be flying on velvet wings through the ocean.

She sat beside her lover and held his hand. In spite of her enthusiasm, he would doze. At every turn of entrancing view she would pinch his arm:

"Look, Jim! Look!"

He would lift his heavy eyelids, grunt good-naturedly and doze again.

In the dining-car she was in mortal terror at first lest he should lapse into the coarse table manners into which he had fallen in camp. She laid his napkin conspicuously on his plate and saw that he had opened and put it in place across his lap before ordering the meals.

The moment he found himself in a crowd, the lights began to flash in his eyes, his broad shoulders lifted and his whole being was at once alert and on guard. He followed his wife's lead with unerring certainty.

She renewed her faith in his early reformation, though his character was a puzzle. He seemed to be forever watching out of the corners of his slumbering eyes. She wondered what it meant.

CHAPTER XIII. THE REAL MAN

They arrived in Asheville the night before Christmas Eve. Jim listened to his wife's prattle about the wonderful views with quiet indifference.

They stopped at the Battery Park Hotel, and she hoped the waning moon would give them at least a glimpse of the beautiful valley of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers and the dark, towering ranges of mountains among the stars. She made Jim wait on the balcony of the room for half an hour, but the clouds grew denser and he persisted in nodding.

His head dipped lower than usual, and she laughed.

"Poor old sleepy-head!"

"For the love o' Mike, Kiddo--me for the hay. Won't them mountains wait till morning?"

"All right!" she answered cheerily. "I'll pull you out at sunrise. The sunrise from our window will be glorious."

He rose and stretched his body like a young, well fed tiger.

"I think it's prettier from the bed. But have it your own way--have it your own way. I'll agree to anything if you lemme go to sleep now."

She rose as the first gray fires of dawn began to warm the cloud-banks on the eastern horizon, stood beside her window and watched in silent ecstasy. Jim was sleeping heavily. She would not wake him until the glory of the sunrise was at its height. She loved to watch the changing lights and shadows in sky and valley and on distant mountain peaks as the light slowly filtered over the eastern hills.

She had recovered from the depression of the last days of their camp.

The journey back into the world had improved Jim's manners. There could be no doubt about his ambitions. His determination to be a millionaire was the lever she now meant to work in raising his social aspirations.

Why should she feel depressed?

Their married life had just begun. The two weeks they had passed on their honeymoon had been happy beyond her dreams of happiness. Somehow her imagination had failed to give any conception of the wonder and glory of this revelation of life. His little lapses of selfishness on their sand island no doubt came from ignorance of what was expected of him.

For one thing she felt especially thankful. There had been no ugly confessions of a shady past to cloud the joy of their love. Her lover might be ignorant of the ways of polite society. He was equally free of its sinister vices. She thanked God for that. The soul of the man she had married was clean of all memories of women. The love he gave was fierce in its unrestrained passion--but it was all hers. She gloried in its strength.

She made up her mind, standing there in the soft light of the dawn, that she would bend his iron will to her own in the growing, sweet intimacy of their married life and threw her fears to the winds.

The thin, fleecy clouds that hung over the low range of the eastern foreground were all aglow now, with every tint of the rainbow, while the sun's bed beyond the hills was flaming in scarlet and gold.

She clapped her hands in ecstasy.