“Or perhaps,” he retorted, “it’s what you are going to do.”

“Oh!”

“Miss Reid, I am going to ask you a favor—­a great favor.”

“Yes?”

“You have known me now almost a year.”

“Yes.”

“And, yet, to be exact, you do not know me at all.”

She did not answer, but looked at him steadily.

“And that, in a way,” he continued, “makes it easy for me to ask the favor; that is, if you feel that you can trust me ever so little—­trust me, I mean, to the extent of believing me sincere.”

“I know that you are sincere, Patches,” she answered, gravely.

“Thank you,” he returned.  Then he said gently, “I want you to let me talk to you about what is most emphatically none of my business.  I want you to let me ask you impertinent questions.  I want you to talk to me about”—­he hesitated; then finished with meaning—­“about your career.”

She felt his earnestness, and was big enough to understand, and be grateful for the spirit that prompted his words.

“Why, Patches,” she cried, “after all that your friendship has meant to me, these past months, I could not think any question that you would ask impertinent Surely you know that, don’t you?”

“I hoped that you would feel that way.  And I know that I would give five years of my life if I knew how to convince you of the truth which I have learned from my own bitter experience, and save you from—­from yourself.”

She could not mistake his earnestness and in spite of herself the man’s intense feeling moved her deeply.

“Save me from myself?” she questioned.  “What in the world do you mean, Patches?”

“Is it true,” he asked, “that your father is offering the ranch for sale, and that you are going out of the Williamson Valley life?”

“Yes, but it is not such a sudden move as it seems.  We have often talked about it at home—­father and mother and I.”

“But the move is to be made chiefly on your account, is it not?”

She flushed a little at this, but answered stoutly.  “Yes.  I suppose that is true.  You see, being the only one in our family to have the advantages of—­well—­the advantages that I have had, it was natural that I should—­Surely you have seen, Patches, how discontented and dissatisfied I have been with the life here!  Why, until you came there was no one to whom I could talk, even—­no one, I mean, who could understand.”

“But what is it that you want, or expect to find, that you may not have right here?”

Then she told him all that he had expected to hear.  Told him earnestly, passionately, of the life she craved, and of the sordid, commonplace narrowness and emptiness—­as she saw it—­of the life from which she sought to escape.  And as she talked the man’s good heart was heavy with sadness and pity for her.