"So little!" His voice told her that her words had stung. "I told you that you did not know. Why, everything that a man has a right to want is here. All that life can give anywhere is here—I mean all of life that is worth having. But I suppose," he finished lamely, "that it's hard for you to see it that way—now. It's like trying to make a city man understand why a fellow is never lonesome just because there's no crowd around. I guess I love this life and am satisfied with it just as the wild horses over there at the foot of old Granite love it and are satisfied."
"But don't you feel, sometimes, that if you had greater opportunities—don't you sometimes wish that you could live where—" She paused at a loss for words. Phil somehow always made the things she craved seem so trivial.
"I know what you mean," he answered. "You mean, don't the wild horses wish that they could live in a fine stable, and have a lot of men to feed and take care of them, and rig them out with fancy, gold-mounted harness, and let them prance down the streets for the crowds to see? No; horses have more sense than that. It takes a human to make that kind of a fool of himself. There's only one thing in the world that would make me want to try it, and I guess you know what that is."
His last words robbed his answer of its sting, and she said gently, "You are bitter to-night, Phil. It is not like you."
He did not answer.
"Did something go wrong to-day?" she persisted.
He turned suddenly to face her, and spoke with a passion unusual to him. "I saw you at the ranch this afternoon—as you were riding away. You did not even look toward the corral where you knew I was at work; and it seemed like all the heart went clear out of me. Oh, Kitty, girl, can't we bring back the old days as they were before you went away?"
"Hush, Phil," she said, almost as she would have spoken to one of her boy brothers.
But he went on recklessly. "No, I'm going to speak to-night. Ever since you came home you have refused to listen to me—you have put me off—made me keep still. I want you to tell me, Kitty, if I were like Honorable Patches, would it make any difference?"
"I do not know Mr. Patches," she answered.