w, and I've talked and
let you talk about things I never talked about before, and I believe
you're true and clean, and--and--"

"Yes," he said. "What's your answer?"

"I know you're true and clean," she repeated. "Come to me--like
that--when I'm a woman and you're a man, and then--then we'll know."

He was tall and straight, and his shadow fell across her face, as
though even the moon must not see. "Reenie," he said, "kiss me."

For one moment she thought of her mother. She knew she stood at the
parting of the ways; that all life for her was being moulded in that
moment. Then she put both her arms about his neck and drew his lips to
hers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dave's opportunity came sooner than he expected. After the departure
of the Hardys things at the old ranch were as both father and son had
predicted, very different. They found themselves on a sort of good
behaviour; a behaviour which, unhappily excited in each other grave
suspicions as to purpose. Between these two men rude courtesies or
considerations of any kind had been so long forgotten that attempts to
reintroduce them resulted in a sort of estrangement more dangerous than
the old open hostility. The tension steadily increased, and both
looked forward to the moment when something must give way.

For several weeks the old man remained entirely sober, but the call of
the appetite in him grew more and more insistent as the days went by,
and at last came the morning when Dave awoke to find him gone. He
needed no second guess; the craving had become irresistible and his
father had ridden to town for the means to satisfy it. The passing
days did not bring his return, but this occasioned no anxiety to Dave.
In the course of a carouse his father frequently remained away for
weeks at a stretch, and at such times it was Dave's custom to visit the
boys on a ranch a dozen miles over the foothills to the southward.
These boys had a sister, and what was more natural than that Dave
should drown his loneliness in such company?

But this time he did not ride southward over the hills. He moped
around the ranch buildings, sat moodily by the little stream, casting
pebbles in the water, or rode over the old trails on which she had so
often been his companion. The season was bright with all the glory of
the foothill September; the silver dome of heaven, cloudless morning
and noon, ripened with the dying day into seas of gold on which floated
cloud-islands of