“I can’t imagine what it could be, then.”

“The explanation is simple.  My mother and Tom Blair were never married.”

Swiftly the color mounted into Florence’s cheeks, and she drew up her horse with a jerk.

“So that is what you brought me out here to tell me!” she blazed.

Ben drew up likewise, and wheeled his pony facing hers.

“I beg your pardon, but I’m not to blame for the way I told you—­of myself.  You forced it.  For once in my life at least, Florence, I’m in dead earnest to-day.”

The girl hesitated.  Tears of anger, or of something else, came into her eyes.  “I’m going home,” she announced briefly, and turned back the way they had come.

The man silently wheeled his buckskin and for five minutes, ten minutes, they rode toward home together.

“Florence,” said the youth steadily, “I had something more I wished to say to you; will you listen?”

No answer—­only the sound of the solid steps of the thoroughbred and the daintier tread of the mustang.

“Florence,” he repeated, “I asked you a question.”

The girl’s face was turned away.  “Oh, you are cruel!” she said.

Ben touched his pony, advanced, caught the bridle of the girl’s horse, and brought both to a standstill.  The girl did not turn her head to look at him, but she did not resist.  Deliberately the man dismounted, loosed the rolled blanket he carried back of his saddle, spread it upon the ground, then looked fairly up into her brown eyes.

“Florence,” he said, as he held out his hand to assist her to dismount, “I’ve something I wish very much to say to you.  Won’t you listen?”

Florence Baker looked steadily down into the clear blue eyes.  Why she did not refuse she could not have told, could never tell.  As well as she knew her own name she realized what was coming—­what it was the man wished to say to her; but she did not refuse to listen.

“Florence,” he said gently, “I’m waiting,” and as in a dream she stepped into the proffered hand, felt herself lowered to the ground, followed the young man over to the blanket, and sat down.  The sun, now high above them, shone down warmly and approvingly.  Scarcely a breath of air was stirring.  Not a sound came from over the prairies.  As completely as though they were the only two people on the earth, they were alone.

The man stretched himself at his companion’s feet, where he could look into her face and catch its every expression.

“Florence Baker,” his voice came to her ears like the sound of one speaking afar off, “Florence Baker, I love you.  In all that I’m going to say, bear this in mind; don’t forget it for a moment.  To me you will always be the one woman on earth.  Why I haven’t told you this before, why I waited until you were passing from my life before I said it, I don’t know; but now I’m as sure as that I’m looking at you that it is so.”  The blue eyes never shifted.  Presently one big strong hand reached over and enfolded within its grasp another tiny resistless hand, which lay there passive.