and then went in
and perfunctorily consumed some food. Later he called up an acquaintance
and asked the loan of his car. It was sent around to the hotel, and he was
just about to start for the ranch when a well-known voice behind him
said:

"May I ride out to Top Hill with you?"

For a moment the blood left his heart and then returned so rapidly it left
him quite pale.

"Larry said you were here. I came back on the train just now. I want to go
to the ranch for--my things. Will you take me?"

"Yes," he said abstractedly.

CHAPTER XVII

"Kurt!"

He looked up with a start. As on that first ride, long ago, his eyes had
been fixed on the road ahead.

"Let's talk a bit," she said. "What did you think--"

"I was such a fool," he replied bitterly. "I should have known that you
were not what you pretended you were. You must believe me when I tell you
that I loved you from that first night we were up here in the hills. I
didn't know how great my love was, though, until I knew I had lost you."

"I thought, or tried to think, you should have known I was not a thief,"
said Pen, with a soft tone in her voice, "but Larry said that only showed
what a good actress I am. I told Larry all about it this morning, and he
said no self-respecting man would ask a thief to marry him, not if he knew
she was a thief before he loved her."

"I didn't read your letter," he said, "until after I had seen the picture
of 'The Thief' last night. So I was prepared for its contents. I read, and
not entirely between the lines, that you did not care."

"I didn't think I did--so much--" she answered, "when I wrote that letter;
but up there, Kurt, up in the clouds yesterday--something within me
unlatched, and I knew that I loved you, and that my love would make you
forgive me for deceiving you. You will?"

"I will. But you see there is a greater obstacle than that--or in the
thought that you were a thief."

"You mean my being a movie actress. Are you so prejudiced against the
profession?"

"The obstacle is that the clerk of the hotel told me he had read somewhere
that Bobbie Burr received a stupendous salary."

"Well, don't you think she earns it?"

"You see, a poor foreman of a ranch would never have the hardihood to ask
a rich girl to marry him; he'd a thousand times rather marry a poor
thief."

"Is that the only obstacle?" she asked.

"It is, and it is unsurmountable."

He was silent, and in his deep-set eyes she read the