how little Leigh
seemed to be thinking of herself, of how he had admired her because she
demanded no admiration from him. Was there an obligation demanded here
today? And had he given grounds for such obligation? Past question, he
had.

"Jo, you must take me just as I am," he said. "All the boys are ready to
crowd into any place I vacate around Cyrus Bennington's premises. You
won't miss one from your company tonight. I may get desperate--and kill
off a few of them sometime to make you really miss me."

He knew he was talking foolishly. He had felt himself superior to the
other young men who obeyed every wish of Jo's. He had been flattered
always by her evident preference for his company, and had not thought of
himself as being controlled by her before. He had been too willing to do
her bidding. Today, for the first time, her rule was irksome. In spite of
his efforts to be agreeable, the drive homeward was not a happy one.

It was twilight when Thaine reached the Cloverdale Ranch and found Leigh
waiting for him on the wide porch. All the way down the river he had been
calling himself names and letting his conscience stab him unmercifully.
And once when something spoke within him, saying, "You never told Jo you
were fond of her. You have not done her any wrong," he stifled back the
pleasing voice and despised himself for trying to find such excuse. He was
only nineteen and had not had the stern discipline of war that Asher
Aydelot had known at the same age.

Jo had offered no further complaint at his refusing her invitation. She
played the vastly more effective part of being grieved but not angry, and
her quiet good-by was so unlike pretty imperious Jo Bennington that Thaine
was tempted to go back and spend the evening in her company. Yet,
strangely enough, he did not blame Leigh for being the cause of his
discomfort, as he should have done. As he neared her home, his conscience
grew less and less noisy, and when he sat at last in Jim Shirley's easy
porch chair with Leigh in a low rocker facing him, while the long summer
Sabbath twilight was falling on the peaceful landscape about him, he had
almost forgotten Jo's claim on him.

"Doctor Carey came down to see me," Leigh was saying, "just as you were
kind enough to ask him to do. He told me he had no money of his own to
loan, but he knew of a fund he might control in a few days. He had to
leave Kansas yesterday on a business trip, but he will see me as soon as
he com