Nothing furtive stirred in Orlando's intensely blue eyes.

Whatever the feeling was, it was an open thing, which had neither motive nor purpose behind it--just a thing almost feminine in its nature.

As yet it was like the involuntary adoration which girls at a certain period of their lives feel successively for one hero after another.

What it would become, who could tell?
What would happen to the young girl adoring the actor, or the hero of the North Pole, the battle-field or the sea, if the adored one was not far off, but very near?
Indeed, who could tell?
But as it was, in the upper room where Louise sat all day looking out over the prairie, and on the prairie where business carried Orlando from ranch to ranch on this perfect day, no recreant thought or feeling existed.

Each was a simple soul, as yet unspoiled and in one sense unsophisticated--the girl, however, with an instinctive caution, such as an animal possesses in the presence of a foe with which it is in truce; the man with an astuteness which belonged to a native instinct for finding a way of doing hard things in the battle of life.
All day Orlando wondered when he should see that face again; all day the eyes of Louise pleaded for another look at the ranchman with the dress of a dandy, the laugh of a child, and the face of an Apollo--or so it seemed to her.