Justin shot up into a tall youth; he was beginning to feel that he was almost a man; and love had come to him, as naturally and simply as the bud changes into the flower. It flushed his face, as he came with Lucy Davison up the path to the arbor seat in the cottonwoods, after a stroll by the stream. Planted when the ranch was established, the trees were now a cool and screening grove. Justin had made for her a crown of the cottonwood leaves, and had set it on her brown hair. As they walked along, hand in hand, he looked at her now and then, with the light of young love in his eyes. He was sure he had never seen a girl so beautiful and it gave him a strange and delightful pleasure just to look at her. “Tell me more about Doctor Clayton,” she said, dropping down upon the arbor seat. “You told me about that scorched photograph. What is that woman to him, anyway?” “I don’t know,” he said, as he sat down by her. “I think she must have been his sweetheart.” “Just because he couldn’t burn her picture?” “Because he came down here in that queer way and has stayed here ever since. Something happened to separate them.” “If that is so I ought to be sorry, I suppose, but I can’t; it was a good thing for me; it kept me here, and gave me a chance to—get an education.” “And we do need a doctor here,” she said, with unnecessary emphasis. “If he hadn’t come, I’m afraid I should have been sent away when Mr. Wingate died, and then I shouldn’t ever have—met you.” “Oh, you might have!” she declared, tossing her crowned head coquettishly. She crumpled a cottonwood leaf in her fingers. With a boldness that gripped his throat he slipped his hand along the back of the arbor seat. “And if—if I had never met you?” “Then you wouldn’t have known me!” “No, I suppose not; but, as you said, I might have; it seems to me that something would have drawn me to you, wherever you were.” The hot color dyed her fair cheeks. Her brown eyes dropped and were veiled by their dark lashes. A strand of the brown hair blown in a tangle across the oval of her face, the delicate curve of the white throat, the yielding touch of her body as he pressed his extended arm close up against it, intoxicated his youthful senses. “I don’t want to think how it would have been if I had never known you,” he declared earnestly. “We have been good friends a long time, Lucy.” “We’re good friends now, aren’t we?” “Yes, but I want it to be something more than just friends.” He pressed his arm closer about her and bent toward her. “I hope you won’t mind my saying it; but I do love you, and have from—from the very first. I didn’t understand so well what it meant then, but now I know—I know that I love you, and love you, and love you!” The arm tightened still more. “And—and if you would only say that you love me, too, and that—” She lifted her face to his. A dash of tears shone in the brown eyes. “I—I have—hurt your feelings!” “No, Justin.”