"But here is the doctor waiting.

Good-by." He stood looking at her in a peculiar, yet half-resigned way, and held out his hand.

For a moment she hesitated.

Had he been less independent and strong, she would have refused to let him go--have offered him some slight employment at the ranch; for oddly enough, in spite of the suspicion that he was concealing something, she felt that she would have trusted him, and he would have been a help to her.

But he was not only determined, but SHE was all the time conscious that he was a totally different man from the one she had taken care of, and merely ordinary prudence demanded that she should know something more of him first.