“Howdy, Columbine!” he said.  “What are you doing up here?  You might get run over.”

“Hello, Wils!” she replied, slowly.  “Oh, I guess I can keep out of the way.”

“Some bad steers in that bunch.  If any of them run over here Pronto will leave you to walk home.  That mustang hates cattle.  And he’s only half broke, you know.”

“I forgot you were driving to-day,” she replied, and looked away from him.  There was a moment’s pause—­long, it seemed to her.

“What’d you come for?” he asked, curiously.

“I wanted to gather columbines.  See.”  She held out the nodding flowers toward him.  “Take one....  Do you like them?”

“Yes.  I like columbine,” he replied, taking one of them.  His keen hazel eyes, softened, darkened.  “Colorado’s flower.”

“Columbine!...  It is my name.”

“Well, could you have a better?  It sure suits you.”

“Why?” she asked, and she looked at him again.

“You’re slender—­graceful.  You sort of hold your head high and proud.  Your skin is white.  Your eyes are blue.  Not bluebell blue, but columbine blue—­and they turn purple when you’re angry.”

“Compliments!  Wilson, this is new kind of talk for you,” she said.

“You’re different to-day.”

“Yes, I am.”  She looked across the valley toward the westering sun, and the slight flush faded from her cheeks.  “I have no right to hold my head proud.  No one knows who I am—­where I came from.”

“As if that made any difference!” he exclaimed.

“Belllounds is not my dad.  I have no dad.  I was a waif.  They found me in the woods—­a baby—­lost among the flowers.  Columbine Belllounds I’ve always been.  But that is not my name.  No one can tell what my name really is.”

“I knew your story years ago, Columbine,” he replied, earnestly.  “Everybody knows.  Old Bill ought to have told you long before this.  But he loves you.  So does—­everybody.  You must not let this knowledge sadden you....  I’m sorry you’ve never known a mother or a sister.  Why, I could tell you of many orphans who—­whose stories were different.”

“You don’t understand.  I’ve been happy.  I’ve not longed for any—­any one except a mother.  It’s only—­”

“What don’t I understand?”

“I’ve not told you all.”

“No?  Well, go on,” he said, slowly.

Meaning of the hesitation and the restraint that had obstructed her thought now flashed over Columbine.  It lay in what Wilson Moore might think of her prospective marriage to Jack Belllounds.  Still she could not guess why that should make her feel strangely uncertain of the ground she stood on or how it could cause a constraint she had to fight herself to hide.  Moreover, to her annoyance, she found that she was evading his direct request for the news she had withheld.