ack
East in some city that has made you change?"

"I have changed, I suppose, because I have become a woman, Phil, as you
have become a man."

"Yes, I have become a man," he returned, "but I have not changed, except
that the boy's love has become a man's love. Would it make any
difference, Kitty, if you cared more for the life here--I mean if you
were contented here--if these things that mean so much to us all,
satisfied you?"

Again she answered, "I do not know, Phil. How can I know?"

"Will you try, Kitty--I mean try to like your old home as you used to
like it?"

"Oh, Phil, I have tried. I do try," she cried. "But I don't think it's
the life that I like or do not like that makes the difference. I am
sure, Phil, that if I could"--she hesitated, then went on bravely--"if I
could give you the love you want, nothing else would matter. You said
you could like any life that suited me. Don't you think that I could be
satisfied with any life that suited the man I loved?"

"Yes," he said, "you could; and that's the answer."

"What is the answer?" she asked.

"Love, just love, Kitty--any place with love is a good place, and
without love no life can satisfy. I am glad you said that. It was what I
wanted you to say. I know now what I have to do. I am like Patches. I
have found my job." There was no bitterness in his voice now.

The girl was deeply moved, but--"I don't think I quite understand,
Phil," she said.

"Why, don't you see?" he returned. "My job is to win your love--to make
you love me--for myself--for just what I am--as a man--and not to try to
be something or to live some way that I think you would like. It's the
man that you must love, and not what he does or where he lives. Isn't
that it?"

"Yes," she answered slowly. "I am sure that is so. It must be so, Phil."

He rose to his feet abruptly. "All right," he said, almost roughly.
"I'll go now. But don't make any mistake, Kitty. You're mine, girl,
mine, by laws that are higher than the things they taught you at school.
And you are going to find it out. I am going to win you--just as the
wild things out there win their mates. You are going to come to me,
girl, because you are mine--because you are my mate."

And then, as she, too, arose, and they stood for a silent moment facing
each other, the woman felt his strength, and in her woman heart was
glad--glad and proud, though she could not give all that he asked.

As she watched him ride away into the n