unconsciously she glanced at the listener to see the effect of her art.  “We’ll be together, How and I, and free—­free as sunshine.  There’ll be nothing but winter, and that’s a long way off, to bring us back.  It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, from the time I can remember.  How goes away every year, and he’s promised this once to take me along.”  Suddenly, almost challengingly, she turned, facing the man her companion.  “Won’t it be fine?” she queried abruptly.

“Yes,” answered a voice politely, a voice with a shade of listlessness in its depths, “fine indeed.  And if you want anything at any time you can go to the nearest ranch house.  One always does forget something you know.”

“That’s just what we can’t do,” refuted the girl swiftly.  “That’s the best of it all.  The Buffalo Butte is the last ranch that way, to the west, until you get to the Hills.  We probably won’t see another human being while we’re gone.  We’ll be as much alone as though we were the only two people in the world.”

Craig hesitated; then he shrugged self-tolerantly.

“I’m hopelessly civilised myself,” he commented smilingly.  “I was thinking that some morning I might want toast and eggs for breakfast.  And my clean laundry might not be delivered promptly if I were changing my residence so frequently.”  He lifted from his elbow.  “Pardon me again, though,” he added contritely.  “I always do see the prosaic side of things.”  The smile vanished, and for the first time he looked away, absently, dreamily.  As he looked his face altered, softened almost unbelievably.  “It would be wonderful,” he voiced slowly, tensely, “to be alone, absolutely alone, out there with the single person one cared for most, the single person who always had the same likes and dislikes, the same hopes and ambitions.  I had never thought of such a thing before; it would be wonderful, wonderful!”

No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl’s face and her eyes were bright.

“I think I envy you a little, your happiness,” said Craig.  Warmer and warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.

“Yes, I’m sure I envy you,” reiterated the man.  “We always envy other people the things we haven’t ourselves; and I—­” He checked himself abruptly.

“Don’t talk so,” pleaded the girl.  “It hurts me.”

“But it’s true.”

Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic, unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land.  Just this she was; and another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad.  Inevitably she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.

“Maybe it’s true now—­you think it is,” she halted; “but there’ll be a time—­”

“No, I think not.  I’m as the Lord made me.”  Craig laughed shortly, unmusically.  “It’s merely my lot.”

The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words.  Distinctly for her as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it altered now under the cloud of another’s unhappiness.  But one suggestion presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.