The query surprised and thrilled Kurt out of his self-centered thought. "I don't know. Have you? Where?" he answered, facing her. It was a relief to find that she still averted her face. "At Berkeley, in California, the first time, and the second at Spokane, in front of the Davenport," she replied. "First—and—second?… You—you remembered both times!" he burst out, incredulously. "Yes. I don't see how I could have helped remembering." Her laugh was low, musical, a little hurried, yet cool. Dorn was not familiar with girls. He had worked hard all his life, there among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Washington. "You mean I—I was impertinent," he began, struggling between shame and pride. "I—I stared at you.… Oh, I must have been rude.… But, Miss Anderson, I—I didn't mean to be. I didn't think you saw me—at all. I don't know what made me do that. It never happened before. I beg your pardon." A subtle indefinable change, perceptible to Dorn, even in his confused state, came over the girl. "I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing you—notice me, that is all." Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that had brought her here to his home—the daughter of a man who came to demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was gray—like his future. "I
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