“But don’t you feel, sometimes, that if you had greater opportunities—­don’t you sometimes wish that you could live where—­” She paused at a loss for words.  Phil somehow always made the things she craved seem so trivial.

“I know what you mean,” he answered.  “You mean, don’t the wild horses wish that they could live in a fine stable, and have a lot of men to feed and take care of them, and rig them out with fancy, gold-mounted harness, and let them prance down the streets for the crowds to see?  No; horses have more sense than that.  It takes a human to make that kind of a fool of himself.  There’s only one thing in the world that would make me want to try it, and I guess you know what that is.”

His last words robbed his answer of its sting, and she said gently, “You are bitter to-night, Phil.  It is not like you.”

He did not answer.

“Did something go wrong to-day?” she persisted.

He turned suddenly to face her, and spoke with a passion unusual to him.  “I saw you at the ranch this afternoon—­as you were riding away.  You did not even look toward the corral where you knew I was at work; and it seemed like all the heart went clear out of me.  Oh, Kitty, girl, can’t we bring back the old days as they were before you went away?”

“Hush, Phil,” she said, almost as she would have spoken to one of her boy brothers.

But he went on recklessly.  “No, I’m going to speak to-night.  Ever since you came home you have refused to listen to me—­you have put me off—­made me keep still.  I want you to tell me, Kitty, if I were like Honorable Patches, would it make any difference?”

“I do not know Mr. Patches,” she answered.

“You met him to-day; and you know what I mean.  Would it make any difference if I were like him?”

“Why, Phil, dear, how can I answer such a question?  I do not know.”

“Then it’s not because I belong here in this country instead of back East in some city that has made you change?”

“I have changed, I suppose, because I have become a woman, Phil, as you have become a man.”

“Yes, I have become a man,” he returned, “but I have not changed, except that the boy’s love has become a man’s love.  Would it make any difference, Kitty, if you cared more for the life here—­I mean if you were contented here—­if these things that mean so much to us all, satisfied you?”

Again she answered, “I do not know, Phil.  How can I know?”

“Will you try, Kitty—­I mean try to like your old home as you used to like it?”

“Oh, Phil, I have tried.  I do try,” she cried.  “But I don’t think it’s the life that I like or do not like that makes the difference.  I am sure, Phil, that if I could”—­she hesitated, then went on bravely—­“if I could give you the love you want, nothing else would matter.  You said you could like any life that suited me.  Don’t you think that I could be satisfied with any life that suited the man I loved?”