Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/254



"That got me nothing," she replied curtly. A shadow crossed his face.

"And you don't care for anything that doesn't get you something?"

"Absolutely not."

"That doesn't sound like you," he said after a silence.

"I'm not 'me' any longer," she responded. "I made myself over to suit my environment. I get along better."

"What has changed you so much, Kate—what in particular?"

She hesitated a moment, then answered coldly:

"Nothing in particular—everything."

"You mean you don't want to tell me?"

"What's the use?" indifferently.

"I might help you."

"How?"

"In ways that friends can help each other."

"I've tried that," she answered dryly.

"You've grown so self-sufficient that you make me fed superfluous and helpless."

"A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn't it?"

Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him:

"Better loosen your horse's cinch; he'll feed better." He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment?

He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarrassed by the silence. Save for an