Flo Hutter's twentieth birthday came along the middle of June, and all
the neighbors and range hands for miles around were invited to celebrate
it.
For the second time during her visit Carley put on the white gown that
had made Flo gasp with delight, and had stunned Mrs. Hutter, and had
brought a reluctant compliment from Glenn. Carley liked to create a
sensation. What were exquisite and expensive gowns for, if not that?
It was twilight on this particular June night when she was ready to go
downstairs, and she tarried a while on the long porch. The evening star,
so lonely and radiant, so cold and passionless in the dusky blue, had
become an object she waited for and watched, the same as she had come
to love the dreaming, murmuring melody of the waterfall. She lingered
there. What had the sights and sounds and smells of this wild canyon
come to mean to her? She could not say. But they had changed her
immeasurably.
Her soft slippers made no sound on the porch, and as she turned
the corner of the house, where shadows hovered thick, she heard Lee
Stanton's voice: "But, Flo, you loved me before Kilbourne came."
The content, the pathos, of his voice chained Carley to the spot. Some
situations, like fate, were beyond resisting.
"Shore I did," replied Flo, dreamily. This was the voice of a girl who
was being confronted by happy and sad thoughts on her birthday.
"Don't you--love me--still?" he asked, huskily.
"Why, of course, Lee! I don't change," she said.
"But then, why--" There for the moment his utterance or courage failed.
"Lee, do you want the honest to God's truth?"
"I reckon--I do."
"Well, I love you just as I always did," replied Flo, earnestly. "But,
Lee, I love him more than you or anybody."
"My Heaven! Flo--you'll ruin us all!" he exclaimed, hoarsely.
"No, I won't either. You can't say I'm not level headed. I hated to tell
you this, Lee, but you made me."
"Flo, you love me an' him--two men?" queried Stanton, incredulously.
"I shore do," she drawled, with a soft laugh. "And it's no fun."
"Reckon I don't cut much of a figure alongside Kilbourne," said Stanton,
disconsolately.
"Lee, you could stand alongside any man," replied Flo, eloquently.
"You're Western, and you're steady and loyal, and you'll--well, some
day you'll be like dad. Could I say more?... But, Lee, this man is
different. He is wonderful. I can't explain it, but I feel it. He has
been through hell's fire. Oh! will I ever forget his ravings when he
lay so ill? He means more to me than just one man. He's American. You're
American, too, Lee, and you trained to be a soldier, and you would have
made a grand one--if I know old Arizona. But you were not called to
France.... Glenn Kilbourne went. God only knows what that means. But he
went. And there's the difference. I saw the wreck of him. I did a little
to save his life and his mind. I wouldn't be an American girl if I
didn't love him.... Oh, Lee, can't you understand?"