Lastly there was a little gray in the
light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was only twenty-seven, yet he
looked ten years older. Studying him so, with the memory of earlier years
in her mind, she was forced to admit that she liked him infinitely more as
he was now. He seemed proven. Something had made him a man. Had it been
his love for her, or the army service, or the war in France, or the
struggle for life and health afterwards? Or had it been this rugged,
uncouth West? Carley felt insidious jealousy of this last possibility. She
feared this West. She was going to hate it. She had womanly intuition
enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with. Still,
Carley would not acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated
Western girl could possibly be a rival. Carley did not need to consider the
fact that she had been spoiled by the attention of men. It was not her
vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.
Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let it
be so. She watched Glenn as he gazed thoughtfully into the amber depths of
the fire. What was going on in his mind? Carley's old perplexity suddenly
had rebirth. And with it came an unfamiliar fear which she could not
smother.
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