A dozen times that morning, dictating¹ to Blake or indicating answers, Dick had been on the verge² of saying to let the rest of the correspondence go.  
“Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall,” he told Blake, when, at ten, the latter gathered up his notes and rose to go. “You ought to catch them at the stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning but to-morrow morning.”
 
Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick’s conversations with his managers for the next hour.
 
“And—­oh, Mr. Blake,” Dick called. “Ask Hennessy about Alden Bessie.—­ The old mare³ was pretty bad last night,” he explained to Bonbright.
 
“Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. Forrest,” Bonbright said, and added, at sight of the irritated drawing up of his employer’s brows, “It’s the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something’s wrong with the plans—­a serious mistake, he says.”
 
Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch⁴ business with his foremen and managers.
 
Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep-dips with Wardman, he left his desk and paced over to the window. The sound of voices and horses, and of Paula’s laugh, had attracted him.
 
“Take that Montana report—­I’ll send you a copy to-day,” he continued, as he gazed out. “They found the formula didn’t get down to it. It was more a sedative⁵ than a germicide. There wasn’t enough kick in it...”
 
Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. Paula, teasing the pair of them, was between Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a painter and sculptor⁶ respectively, who had arrived on an early train. Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, and was slightly edged toward the rear. So the party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough it would resolve itself into two and two.
 
Shortly after eleven, restless and moody⁷, he wandered out with a cigarette into the big patio⁸, where he smiled grim amusement at the various tell-tale signs of Paula’s neglect of her goldfish. The sight of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain pools she kept her selected and more gorgeous blooms of fish. Thither⁹ he went, through doors without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the servants.
 
This had been Dick’s one great gift to Paula. It was love-lavish as only a king of fortune could make it. He had given her a free hand with it, and insisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been his delight to tease his quondam guardians¹⁰ with the stubs of the checkbook she had used. It bore no relation to the scheme and architecture of the Big House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it that it played no part in jar of line or color. A show-place of show-places, it was not often shown. Outside Paula’s sisters and intimates, on rare occasions some artist was permitted to enter and catch his breath. Graham had heard of its existence, but not even him had she invited to see.
 
It was round, and small enough to escape giving any cold hint of spaciousness¹¹. The Big House was of sturdy concrete, but here was marble in exquisite¹² delicacy¹³. The arches of the encircling arcade¹⁴ were of fretted¹⁵ white marble that had taken on just enough tender green to prevent any glare of reflected light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up the pillars and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck-like, humorous, and happy faces took the place of grinning gargoyles¹⁶. Dick strolled the rosy¹⁷ marble pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his mood.
 
The heart and key of the fairy patio was the fountain, consisting of three related shallow basins at different levels, of white marble and delicate as shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life-sized babies wrought¹⁸ from pink marble by no mean hand. Some peered over the edges into lower basins, one reached arms covetously¹⁹ toward the goldfish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another stood with dimpled legs apart stretching himself, others waded²⁰, others were on the ground amongst the roses white and blush, but all were of the fountain and touched it at some point. So good was the color of the marble, so true had been the sculptor, that the illusion was of life. No cherubs²¹ these, but live warm human babies.
 
Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and long, finishing his cigarette and retaining it dead in his hand. That was what she had needed, he mused—­babies, children. It had been her passion. Had she realized it... He sighed, and, struck by a fresh thought, looked to her favorite seat with certitude that he would not see the customary sewing lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not sew these days.
 
He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the arcade, which contained her chosen paintings and etchings, and copies in marble and bronze of her favorites of the European galleries. Instead he went up the stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory on the landing where the staircase divided, and on and up into her quarters that occupied the entire upper wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned and gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing was a cut jewel in its perfectness and color, and he acknowledged, although he had made it possible for her, that it was entirely²² her own creation—­her one masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he had realized it for her. And yet now, he meditated²³, it meant nothing to her. She was not mercenary, that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere²⁴ baubles²⁵ such as that would weigh nothing in the balance against her heart.
 
He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely noting at what he gazed, but gazing with fondness at it all. Like everything else of hers, it was distinctive²⁶, different, eloquent²⁷ of her. But when he glanced into the bathroom with its sunken Roman bath, for the life of him he was unable to avoid seeing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the ranch plumber²⁸.
 
As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with the expectation of finding no new work, but was disappointed; for a portrait of himself confronted him. He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from a photograph and filling in from memory. The particular photograph she was using had been a fortunate snapshop of him on horseback. The Outlaw³⁰, for once and for a moment, had been at peace, and Dick, hat in hand, hair just nicely rumpled³¹, face in repose³², unaware³³ of the impending³⁴ snap, had at the instant looked squarely into the camera. No portrait photographer could have caught a better likeness³⁵. The head and shoulders Paula had had enlarged, and it was from this that she was working. But the portrait had already gone beyond the photograph, for Dick could see her own touches.
 
With a start............