He rose, turning toward the distant mountains, bright and smiling in their noonday splendor. As his eyes dwelt upon them in brooding silence, Helen gained her feet. And, aware of her great part in this wretchedness, she took his hand very gently in her own. Subtly conscious of the touch, realizing the tumult in his soul, she found herself suddenly alive to a feeling within her deeper than mere pity and sympathy. It was the anguish preceding tears. Quickly withdrawing her hand, she turned and fled to the house. Inside, she slowly approached a window. He was leading Pat into the corral; and, watching him unsaddle and unbridle her horse, her treasure, she awoke to something else within her, a strange swelling of her heart, different from anything she had ever known. It was like ownership; it was a something as of maternal pride, a something new to her which she could not fathom. She turned away. When she looked out again, her eyes dry and burning, he was riding slowly along the trail toward town. It was the beginning of the end. Winter passed, with horses abandoned for the delights, swift-following, of dinner and dance and house party. These affairs made deep inroads upon Helen's time, and so Pat was left pretty much to his own reflections. Yet he managed to fill the days to his satisfaction. Standing in the stable, he loved to watch the snow-capped mountains, and the tiny white clouds scudding around them, and the mellow radiance of golden sunlight streaming over them. Also, gazing out of the little square window, he spent long periods in viewing the hard brown of the nearer mesaland--the dips and dunes and thread-like arroyos, with an occasional horseman crawling between. Or else, when he found himself yearning for his mistress, he would turn eyes upon the house, and with lazy speculation regard its sun-flecked windows, tightly shut doors, and smoking chimneys, in the hope that she might step forth. Then came more mild weather when he would spend long hours outside the stable, in his corner in the corral, there to renew his silent vigil over nature and the house from this vantage. Thus he filled his days, and found them not so long as formerly in his babyhood, when each hour was fraught with so many little things that demanded his closest interest and attention.