"Well, you gave no sign that you wanted me."
"There was no reason why I should," she retorted. "You are not a child. I was with my friends from the East. You could have joined us if you had cared to. I should be very glad, indeed, to present you to Mr. and Mrs. Manning."
"Thank you, but I don't care to be exhibited as an interesting specimen to people who have no use for me except when I do a few fool stunts to amuse them."
"Very well, Phil," she returned coldly. "If that is your feeling, I do not care to present you to my friends. They are every bit as sincere and genuine as you are; and I certainly shall not trouble them with anyone who cannot appreciate them."
Kitty was angry, as she had good reason for being. But beneath her anger she was sorry for the man whose bitterness, she knew, was born of his love for her. And Phil saw only that Kitty was lost to him—saw in the girl's eastern friends those who, he felt, had robbed him of his dream.
"I suppose," he said, after a moment's painful silence, "that I had better go back to the range where I belong. I'm out of place here."
The girl was touched by the hopelessness in his voice, but she felt that it would be no kindness to offer him the relief of an encouraging word. Her day with her eastern friends, and the memories that her meeting with Mrs. Manning had aroused, convinced her more than ever that her old love for Phil, and the life of which he was a part, were for her impossible.
When she did not speak, the cowboy said bitterly, "I noticed that your fine friends did not take quite all your time. You found an opportunity for a quiet little visit with Honorable Patches."
Kitty was angry now in earnest. "You are forgetting yourself, Phil," she answered with cold dignity. "And I think that as long as you feel as you do toward my friends, and can speak to me like this about Mr. Patches, you are right in saying that you belong on the range. Mr. and Mrs. Manning are here, I see. I am going to dine with them. Good-by!" She turned away, leaving him standing there.
A moment he waited, as though stunned; then he turned to make his way blindly out of the hotel.