The moment for which she had waited more than two months had come at last.
"Glenn--when will you go back East?" she asked, tensely and low.
The instant the words were spent upon her lips she realized that he had
always been waiting and prepared for this question that had been so
terrible for her to ask.
"Carley," he replied gently, though his voice rang, "I am never going back
East."
An inward quivering hindered her articulation.
"Never?" she whispered.
"Never to live, or stay any while," he went on. "I might go some time for a
little visit. . . . But never to live."
"Oh--Glenn!" she gasped, and her hands fluttered out to him. The shock was
driving home. No amaze, no incredulity succeeded her reception of the fact.
It was a slow stab. Carley felt the cold blanch of her skin. "Then--this is
it--the something I felt strange between us?"
"Yes, I knew--and you never asked me," he replied.
"That was it? All the time you knew," she whispered, huskily. "You knew.
. . . I'd never--marry you--never live out here?"
"Yes, Carley, I knew you'd never be woman enough--American enough--to help
me reconstruct my broken life out here in the West," he replied, with a sad
and bitter smile.
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