id not recognize his own mistress and the young man who had been her
almost constant companion since that memorable fright on the mesa eight
months before. But as they drew closer, and he came to know the slender
form in white, he sounded a soft whinny of greeting and pressed eagerly
close to the fence. The pair came near, very near; but neither of them
paid the least attention to him--a fact which troubled him deeply. And
directly his mistress spoke, but, as she was addressing herself to the
young man, this troubled him even more. But he could listen, and listen
he did.

"Stephen," she was saying, "you _must_ accept my answer as final.
For you must know, Stephen," she went on, quietly, "that I have not
changed toward you. My answer to-night, and my answer to-morrow night,
and my answer for ever, in so far as I can see, will be what it was last
autumn. I am more than sorry that this is so. But it is so,
nevertheless." She was firm, though Pat, knowing her well, knew that it
required all the force of her trembling soul to give firmness to her
words.

Stephen felt something of this as he stood beside her in grim meekness.
With his hungry eyes upon her, he felt the despair of one sunk to utter
depths, of a man mentally and physically broken. For he loved this girl.
And it was this love, God-given, that made him persist. In the spell of
this love he realized that he was but a weak agent, uttering demands
given him to utter, and unable, through a force as mighty as Nature
herself, to do otherwise. Yet though he was utterly torn apart, he was
able, despite this mighty demand within him, to understand her
viewpoint. He had understood it from the first. But the craving within
would not let him accept it.

"I suppose," he rejoined, "that the one decent course for me would be to
drop all this. But somehow I can't. I love you that way, Helen! Don't
you understand? I cannot let go! I seem to be forced repeatedly to
make--make a boor of myself!" There was a moment's silence. "Yet I have
resisted it," he went on. "I have fought it--fought it with all the
power I have! But I--I somehow--cannot let go!"

Helen said nothing. She herself was coming to realize fully the depths
of this man's passion. She knew--knew as few women have known--that here
was a man who wanted her; but she knew also, and she was sorry to know
it, that she could not conscientiously give herself to him. She
regretted it not alone for his sake, but for her own a