Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/51

 The point is, however, that he decided to say nothing and probably would have kept to his decision had not one or two things occurred which rather forced his hand.

One was that Kay deliberately refused to ride with him that evening, and went out with Tom instead. And the other was that Herbert, when she came in later on with her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars, felt impelled to take a long walk before bed and thus happened on something he was not meant to see.

Had he known it, it was not such a great matter that had sent Kay home in such excitement. Her relations with Tom were still largely impersonal on those rides of theirs. He still had himself well in hand. He would stop on top of a knoll and gaze at the mountains, outlined against the setting sun.

"You ever been across? To Europe, I mean?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, I'll bet there's nothing prettier than that over there."

But there were times on those rides together when he seemed to forget her, to be absorbed in a nature he worshiped inarticulately, or again to be concerned with that mysterious man-life of his which he never shared with any one. She was miserably jealous then. But again he talked of his people. His father had come up from the South during the gold rush into the Black Hills, but had found no gold. And the end of free land killed him, finally.

"He'd always been used to moving," he said. "He was kind of restless, and finally there weren't any more places to go. The very sight of wire made him feel crowded. He always thought there would be a chance over the next hill, provided it lay West."

Kay nodded. She knew nothing about free land, or the sudden shutting off that took place at the beginning of the new century. But because it was Tom's father she felt vaguely sad.

"Why, say," he drawled on, "if he'd lived to have to take out a license to go hunting, he'd have had a fit. He'd shot his own meat for twenty years. He believed in free land