All through the remaining hours of that afternoon and evening Kitty was disturbed and troubled.  At times she wanted to laugh at the professor’s ridiculous proposal; and again, her cheeks burned with anger; and she could have cried in her shame and humiliation.  And with it all her mind was distraught by the persistent question:  Was not the professor’s conception of an ideal mating the legitimate and logical conclusion of those very advanced ideas of culture which he represented, and which she had so much admired?  If she sincerely believed the life represented by the professor and his kind so superior—­so far above the life represented by Phil Acton—­why should she not feel honored instead of being so humiliated and shamed by the professor’s—­she could not call it love?  If the life which Phil had asked her to share was so low in the scale of civilization; if it were so far beneath the intellectual and spiritual ideals which she had formed, why did she feel so honored by the strong man’s love?  Why had she not felt humiliated and ashamed that Phil should want her to mate with him?  Could it be, she asked herself again and again, that there was something, after all, superior to that culture which she had so truly thought stood for the highest ideals of the race?  Could it be that, in the land of Granite Mountain, there was something, after all, that was as superior to the things she had been taught as Granite Mountain itself was superior in its primeval strength and enduring grandeur to the man-made buildings of her school?

It was not strange that Kitty’s troubled thoughts should turn to Helen Manning.  Clearly, Helen’s education had led to no confusion.  On the contrary, she had found an ideal love, and a happiness such as every true, womanly woman must, in her heart of hearts, desire.

It was far into the night when Kitty, wakeful and restless, heard the sound of a horse’s feet.  She could not know that it was Honorable Patches riding past on his way to the ranch on the other side of the broad valley meadows.

Weary in body, and with mind and spirit exhausted by the trials through which he had passed, Patches crept to his bed.  In the morning, when he delivered his message, the Dean, seeing the man’s face, urged him to stay for the day at the ranch.  But Patches said no; Phil was expecting him, and he must return to the outfit in Granite Basin.  As soon as breakfast was over he set out.

He had ridden as far as the head of Mint Wash, and had stopped to water his horse, and to refresh himself with a cool drink and a brief rest beside the fragrant mint-bordered spring, when he heard someone riding rapidly up the wash the way he had come.  A moment later, Kitty, riding her favorite Midnight, rounded a jutting corner of the rocky wall of the bluff.