hat was your wish, Gail?" The voice was low and sweet.

I took her hand in mine and she did not draw away from me.

"That I might some day have a real home all my own down there among the
trees. I was a little homesick boy that night, and I came up here to
watch the sunset and see the open level lands that I have always loved.
Eloise, Jondo told me once of three young college men who loved your
beautiful mother, and because of that love they never married anybody,
but they lived useful, happy lives. I can understand now why they should
love her, and why, because they could not have her love, they would not
marry anybody else. One was my uncle Esmond, and one was Father Josef."

"And the third?" The voice was very low and a tremor shook the hand I
held.

"He did not tell me. And I speak of it now only to show you that in what
I want to say I am not altogether selfish and unkind. I love you,
Eloise. I have loved you since the day, long ago, when your face came
before me on the parade-ground at Fort Leavenworth. I told you of that
once down on the bluff by the Clarenden home at Kansas City. I shall
love you, as the Bedouin melody runs,

Til the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the judgment
Book unfold!

"But I know that it will end as Uncle Esmond's and Father Josef's loving
did, in my living my life alone."

Eloise quickly withdrew her hand, and the pain in her white face haunts
me still.

"I do not want to hurt you, oh, Eloise. I know I do wrong to speak, but
to-night will be the last time. I thought that night in the church at
San Miguel, and that next day when we rode for our lives together, that
you cared for me who would have walked through fire for you. But in that
hour in the little chapel a barrier came between us. You rode away
without one word or glance. And I turned back feeling that my soul was
falling into ruins like that half-ruined little pile of stone that some
holy padre had built his heart into years and years ago. Then Little
Blue Flower brought your message to me and I knew as I sat beside Fort
Marcy's wall that night, and saw the sun go down, that the light of my
life was going out with it."

"But, Gail," Eloise exclaimed, "I said I could not send you any word,
but you would understand. I--I couldn't say any more than that." Her
voice was full of tears and she turned away from me and looked at the
last radiant tints edging the little cloud-fl