"He's yours from this minute," repeated Douglas. "And so am I yours. But I'm not going to nag you about it. I'm just going to try to look out for you." There was something so sober, so gentle, and so determined about Douglas that for once in her life Judith was at a loss for a reply. She started slowly for the cow shed. Then she turned back. "But I'm not going to take Prince, Douglas. That's too much!" "Well," said Douglas. "Maybe I will keep Prince for a while. It'll be kind of lonesome." "Lonesome!" Judith repeated the phrase as though it struck a familiar chord. "Life is lonesome, isn't it Doug! Seems as though I never dare to be myself any more, since Oscar's death. That was the first time I ever realized how lonely you can be." Douglas nodded, his eyes full of an understanding that was pitiful. Youth should not be allowed to contemplate this sort of loneliness. It is soul searing. "But remember, Judith," he said, "that you've always got me." She gave him an enigmatic look and returned to her work. CHAPTER IV THE HOUSE IN THE YELLOW CANYON "Beauty: to see it, to hear it, to feel it: that's all that makes life worth while." --_Inez Rodman_. Douglas was both elated and dejected by his conversation with Judith. He was elated to feel that at last Judith knew his feeling toward her. He was dejected because he felt that she had no understanding of the depth and sincerity of this feeling. And with that marvelously naive egotism of the male, he gave many hours of heavy thought to Judith's weaknesses and temptations, none at all to his own. Perhaps more than anything, Judith's friendship with Inez began to worry him. The more he pondered on it, the more perturbed he became; and finally, a week or so after the dance, he resolved to ask Inez to break with Judith. The Rodman house was built against the sheer yellow stone facing at the base of Lost Chief range, known incorrectly as the Yellow Canyon. The house of half a dozen rooms was the most picturesque cabin in the valley, for Grandfather Rodman had built the roof with an overhang, giving the house the hospitable shadows of a little Swiss chalet. There were several hundred acres belonging to the ranch. Free range had grown small before Inez' father died and he had gotten his acres well into grass and alfalfa. But when he and Inez' mother were wiped out by smallpox, leaving the ranch to Inez, the fields rapidly returned to the wild. Inez, fifteen at the time of her parents' death, was unwilling to lead the life of a ranch woman and for ten years the ranch had been going to pieces.