Summary
Oil-baron heiress Phoebe Morrison—silk-gloved, porcelain-complexioned—glides from Fifth-Avenue chandeliers toward the sun-cracked frontier after a single sepia glimpse of Squire Elton, her father’s business partner, a man whose shoulders seem carved from mesas. She arrives in a dust-fumed boomtown where derricks cough like iron lungs; Elton’s handshake is calloused, his drawl slow as tumbleweed. Love sparks, yet Phoebe winces at his unvarnished table manners, his habit of wiping gravy with a bandanna. Certain that matrimony requires continental varnish, she dispatches him across the Atlantic like a princeling in chrysalis. He returns fluent in Schubert and champagne protocol, monocle winking—an immaculate counterfeit. They wed; phosphorescent ballrooms replace prairie starlight. Soon Phoebe discovers that polished silver can echo hollow: her husband’s laughter now arrives on schedule, his eyes veiled by Savile Row boredom. Suspicion germinates when cousin Sophia—languid, predatory—lingers over his lapel carnation. In a pique of strategem, Phoebe contracts a convenient “western fever,” persuades Elton that only desert air will cure her pallor. Back amid sagebrush and oil flares, his syllables slacken, shoulders loosen; the man she first desired re-emerges like a river uncovered by drought. Yet the final inversion stings: Elton reveals the entire metamorphosis was theater—he played the drawing-room automaton to expose her snobbery, letting her taste the ash of her own artifice before stripping it away.
Synopsis
Phoebe Morrison, a wealthy young lady, is shown a photograph of handsome Squire Elton by her father. Since Elton is a partner in her father's oil business, the girl goes west to meet him. The two fall in love, but Phoebe decides her prospective husband needs more polish comparable to the men she knew in the east. So Elton goes on a tour of Europe, returns a refined gentleman, and marries Phoebe. But now Phoebe feels he has lost some of his charm. Then she thinks he is having a fling with her cousin Sophia. So she decides the best solution is for Elton to return to his original environment out west. She feigns ill health, and persuades him to move, and gradually he becomes the man she fell in love with. Then Elton confesses that he had been acting the part of an Eastern gentleman to teach Phoebe a lesson.
