ctating."

"But would they care so much--if they had to work--plenty of work--and
children?" inquired Glenn, wistfully.

"Glenn! Work and children for modern women? Why, you are dreaming!" said
Carley, with a laugh.

She saw him gaze thoughtfully into the glowing embers of the fire, and
as she watched him her quick intuition grasped a subtle change in his
mood. It brought a sternness to his face. She could hardly realize she
was looking at the Glenn Kilbourne of old.

"Come close to the fire," he said, and pulled up a chair for her. Then
he threw more wood upon the red coals. "You must be careful not to catch
cold out here. The altitude makes a cold dangerous. And that gown is no
protection."

"Glenn, one chair used to be enough for us," she said, archly, standing
beside him.

But he did not respond to her hint, and, a little affronted, she
accepted the proffered chair. Then he began to ask questions rapidly. He
was eager for news from home--from his people--from old friends. However
he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly
for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to
ask questions she found him reticent.

He had fallen upon rather hard days at first out here in the West; then
his health had begun to improve; and as soon as he was able to work his
condition rapidly changed for the better; and now he was getting along
pretty well. Carley felt hurt at his apparent disinclination to confide
in her. The strong cast of his face, as if it had been chiseled in
bronze; the stern set of his lips and the jaw that protruded lean and
square cut; the quiet masked light of his eyes; the coarse roughness
of his brown hands, mute evidence of strenuous labors--these all gave a
different impression from his brief remarks about himself. Lastly there
was a little gray in the light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was
only twenty-seven, yet he looked ten years older. Studying him so, with
the memory of earlier years in her mind, she was forced to admit that
she liked him infinitely more as he was now. He seemed proven. Something
had made him a man. Had it been his love for her, or the army service,
or the war in France, or the struggle for life and health afterwards? Or
had it been this rugged, uncouth West? Carley felt insidious jealousy of
this last possibility. She feared this West. She was going to hate it.
She had womanly intuition enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl s