know--whatever it
was--that it was all in fun. Why, I wouldn't have you different, dear,
if I could! I couldn't love you so much if you were not just what you
are. And yet," sighing, "it might be better for you."

She laid her head against his shoulder and drew closer to him in that
soft little nestling way of hers. David looked straight over the lovely
head, keeping his grim gaze as high as he could. He knew how it would be
if his stern gray eyes were to meet Ruth's wet blue ones. He was still a
boy, but trying to be a man--and beginning to understand. No man with
his heart in the right place could hold out against her pretty coaxing.
It was sweet enough to wile the very birds out of the trees. It made no
difference that he had been used to her wiles from babyhood up. To be
used to Ruth's ways only made them harder to resist. No stranger could
possibly have foreseen his defeat as clearly as David foresaw his at the
moment that she started toward him. But self-respect required him to
stand firm as long as possible, although he felt the strength going out
of his rifle arm under her clinging touch. She felt it going, too, and
began to smile through her tears. And then, sure of her victory, she
threw caution to the winds--as older and wiser women have done too
openly in vanquishing stronger and more masterful men. She let him see
that she knew she had conquered, which is always a fatal mistake on the
part of a woman toward a man. Smiling and dimpling, she put up her hand
and patted his cheek--precisely as if he had been a child.

The boy shrunk as if the caress had been a touch of fire. He broke away
and strode off up the hillside with his longest, manliest stride. This
humiliation was past bearing or forgiving. He could have forgiven being
called a dreamer--a useless drone--among the men of clear heads and
strong hands who had already wrested a great state from the wilderness,
and who, through this conquest, were destined to become the immortal
founders of the Empire of the West. He could have overlooked being
spoken to like a child by a girl who might be younger than himself for
all he or she knew to the contrary--though this would have been harder.
He might even have forgiven that pat on his cheek which was downy with
beard, had he been either younger or older. But as it was--well, the
matter may safely be left to the sympathy of the man who remembers the
most sensitive time of his own youth; that trying period when he