asked gravely.

"No, Lahoma. At least not for a long, long time. I don't believe it's
good for me to forget the life I've chosen, even for a happy hour.
When I left the city, it was to drop out of the world--nobody knows
what became of me, not even my brother. You've brought everything
back, and that isn't good for my peace of mind and so--good-bye!"

Tall and straight he stood, like a soldier whose duty it is to face
defeat; and standing thus, he fastened his eyes upon her face as if to
stamp those features in a last long look upon his heart.

"Good-by," said Lahoma; this time she did not hold out her hand. Her
face was composed, her voice quiet. If in her eyes there was the look
of one who has been rebuffed; her pride was too great to permit a show
of pain.

Wilfred hesitated. But what was to be done? Solitude and homesickness
had perhaps distorted his vision; at any rate he had succumbed to the
folly against which he had been warned. He could not accept Lahoma as
a mere child; and though, during the scene, he had repeatedly reminded
himself that she was only fifteen, her face, her voice, her form, her
manner of thought, refused the limits of childhood. Therefore he went
away, outwardly well-content with his morning, but inwardly full of
wrath that his heart had refused the guidance of his mind.

And she had been so simple, so eager to meet him on an equal plane,
even clinging to him as to the only hope in her narrow world that might
draw her out into deeper currents of knowledge.

"I've always been a fool," he muttered savagely, as he sought his
horse. "I was a fool about Annabel--and now I'm too big a fool to
enjoy what fortune has fairly flung in my path." Presently he began to
laugh--it was all so ridiculous, beating a retreat because he could not
regard a fifteen-year-old girl as a little child! He drew several
time-worn letters from his pocket and tore them into small bits that
fluttered away like snowflakes on the wind. He had no longer a
sentimental interest in them, at all events.

CHAPTER XII

THE BIG WORLD

He did not come again. Lahoma used to go to the hill-island, which she
called Turtle Hill because the big flattened rocks looked like turtles
that had crawled up out of the cove to sun themselves; among these
turtles she would lie, watching the open mouth of the mountain
horseshoe in the vain hope that Wilfred would appear from around the
granite wall. Occasionally she desce