The afterglow was deepening to purple; the pink cloud-flecks were turning gray in the east, and a kaleidoscope of softest rose and tender green and misty lavender filled the lengthening shadows of the twilight prairie.

“Eloise, I had a longing that night, still unfulfilled.  I wish I dared to tell you what it was.”

I turned to look at the fair girl-woman beside me.  In the twilight her eyes were always like stars; and the golden hair and the pink bloom of her cheeks seemed richer in their shadowy setting.  To-night her gown was white—­like the Greek dress she had worn at Mat’s wedding, on the night when she met Beverly in the little side porch at midnight.  Why did I recall that here?

“What was your wish, Gail?” The voice was low and sweet.

I took her hand in mine and she did not draw away from me.

“That I might some day have a real home all my own down there among the trees.  I was a little homesick boy that night, and I came up here to watch the sunset and see the open level lands that I have always loved.  Eloise, Jondo told me once of three young college men who loved your beautiful mother, and because of that love they never married anybody, but they lived useful, happy lives.  I can understand now why they should love her, and why, because they could not have her love, they would not marry anybody else.  One was my uncle Esmond, and one was Father Josef.”

“And the third?” The voice was very low and a tremor shook the hand I held.

“He did not tell me.  And I speak of it now only to show you that in what I want to say I am not altogether selfish and unkind.  I love you, Eloise.  I have loved you since the day, long ago, when your face came before me on the parade-ground at Fort Leavenworth.  I told you of that once down on the bluff by the Clarenden home at Kansas City.  I shall love you, as the Bedouin melody runs,

Til the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the judgment

                Book unfold!

“But I know that it will end as Uncle Esmond’s and Father Josef’s loving did, in my living my life alone.”

Eloise quickly withdrew her hand, and the pain in her white face haunts me still.

“I do not want to hurt you, oh, Eloise.  I know I do wrong to speak, but to-night will be the last time.  I thought that night in the church at San Miguel, and that next day when we rode for our lives together, that you cared for me who would have walked through fire for you.  But in that hour in the little chapel a barrier came between us.  You rode away without one word or glance.  And I turned back feeling that my soul was falling into ruins like that half-ruined little pile of stone that some holy padre had built his heart into years and years ago.  Then Little Blue Flower brought your message to me and I knew as I sat beside Fort Marcy’s wall that night, and saw the sun go down, that the light of my life was going out with it.”