“I didn’t look for you to ride up here,” he said lamely.

“And I didn’t expect to find you here,” she said as she dismounted.  She walked straight to him.  “Lorry, what is the matter?  You’re not like my ranger man at all!  Are you in trouble?”

Her question, so frank and sincere, and the deep solicitude in her troubled eyes hurt him, and yet he was glad to feel that hot pain in his throat.  He knew now that he cared for her more than for any living being; beyond all thought of passion or of selfishness.  She looked and seemed like a beautiful boy, with all the frankness of true comradeship in her attitude and manner.  And she was troubled because of him—­and not for herself.  Lorry thought of the other girl.  He had taken his pay.  His lips burned dry as he recalled that moment when he had held her in his arms.

Dorothy saw the dull pain in his eyes, a sort of dumb pleading for forgiveness for something he had done; she could not imagine what.  He dropped to his knee, and taking her slender hand in his kissed her fingers.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, yet her free hand caressed his hair.  “What is it, ranger man?”

“I been a regular dam’ fool, Dorothy.”

“But, Lorry!  You know—­if there is anything, anything in the world that I can do—­Please, please don’t cry.  If you were to do that I think I should die.  I couldn’t stand it.  You make me afraid.  What is it?  Surely it is not—­Alice?”

He crushed her fingers.  Suddenly he stood up and stepped back.  The sunlight shone on his bared head.  He looked very boyish as he shrugged his shoulders as though to free himself from an invisible hand that oppressed and irritated him.  His sense of fair play in so far as Alice Weston was concerned would not allow him to actually regret that affair.  To him that had been a sort of conquest.  But shame and repentance for having been disloyal to Dorothy were stamped so clearly upon his features that she understood.  She knew what he was about to say, and checked him.

“Don’t tell me,” she said gently.  “You have told me.  I know Alice is attractive; she can’t help that.  If you care for her—­”

“Care for her!  She was playin’ with me.  When I found out that—­”

Dorothy caught her breath.  Her eyes grew big.  She had not thought that Alice Weston—­But then that did not matter now.  Lorry was so abjectly sorry about something or other.  He felt her hand on his sleeve.  She was smiling.  “You’re just a great big, silly boy, ranger man.  I’m really years older than you.  Please don’t tell me anything.  I don’t want to know.  I just want you to be happy.”

“Happy?  And you say that!”

“Of course!”

“Well, mebby I could be happy if you was to set to and walk all over me.”

“Oh, but that wouldn’t do any good.  Tell me why you stopped here at the spring.  You didn’t expect to meet any one, did you?”

“I—­stopped here—­because we camped here that time.”