Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/76

 her life. He did not believe that she meant to have him accept her reading of range life and range men literally. But it was strange that revulsion against that life had struck with roots so tenacious and deep into her young heart. The shadow of its somber days had clouded out all memory of its delights. He could not believe, even so, that she was quite sincere.

"But you like it here, you'd be lonesome for it and wish you were back if you went away," he said.

"Yes," she owned, with unexpected frankness, "I'd gtieve my heart out for it if I had to go away and never come back."

So she was only another woman after the original, the universal pattern, he thought, not smiling now as he looked with feeling sympathy into her quickly averted eyes. Not only a woman after the universal pattern, but a human being after the mold of the best and the worst, in all of whom there is the flaw of impatience and unrest with the best that today can give, and grief and heartbreak when they have thrown it away to speed to world's end after the fatuous promises which rise green and beckoning out of the desert Places of despair.

"How far is it to the post?" he asked her, seeing again with his quick imagery, perhaps with a tinge of jealous envy—considering what lay, before him of rough life in a blanket among the ants—young cavalry officers dismounting at the gate.

"Eighteen miles, due north over the military road. That's it," indicating the trail that passed the gate; "you came over it from Saunders."