But Nan had dropped her negligee about her feet, and was convulsed at the
figure made of her slim young body by the distorted mirror.

"Come here, Milt," she gasped.

She clung to him, gurgling with laughter, pointing one shaking finger at
the monstrosity in the glass.

"Look--look what you married!"

They dressed gayly. His optimism and enthusiasm boiled over again. It was a
shame, his leaving her all that afternoon, he reiterated; but she had no
idea what giant strides he had made. He told her of the city, and he
enumerated some of the acquaintances he had made--Calhoun Bennett, Bert
Taylor, Major Marmaduke Miles, Michael Rowlee, Judge Caldwell, and others.
They had been most cordial to him, most kind; they had taken him in without
delay.

"It's the spirit of the West, Nan," he cried, "hospitable, unsuspicious,
free, eager to welcome! Oh, this is going to be the place for me;
opportunity waits at every corner. They are not tied down by conventions,
by the way somebody else has done things--"

He went on rapidly to detail to her some of the things he had been told--
the contemplated public improvements, the levelling of the sand hills, the
building of a city out of nothing.

"Why, Nan, do you realize that only four years ago this very Plaza had only
six small buildings around it, that there were only three two-story