those things which in her home life and environment she so greatly
missed. He had somehow seemed to magnify the almost unbearable
commonplace narrowness of her daily routine. He had made her even more
restless, disturbed and dissatisfied. It had been to her as when one in
some foreign country meets a citizen from one's old home town. And for
this Kitty was genuinely sorry. She did not wish to feel as she did
about her home and the things that made the world of those she loved.
She had tried honestly to still the unrest and to deny the longing. She
had wished many times, since her return from the East, that she had
never left her home for those three years in school. And yet, those
years had meant much to her; they had been wonderful years; but they
seemed, somehow--now that they were past and she was home again--to have
brought her only that unrest and longing.

From the beginning of her years until that first great crisis in her
life--her going away to school--this world into which she was born had
been to Kitty an all-sufficient world. The days of her childhood had
been as carefree and joyous, almost, as the days of the young things of
her father's roaming herds. As her girlhood years advanced, under her
mother's wise companionship and careful teaching, she had grown into her
share of the household duties and into a knowledge of woman's part in
the life to which she belonged, as naturally as her girlish form had put
on the graces of young womanhood. The things that filled the days of her
father and mother, and the days of her neighbors and friends, had filled
her days. The things that were all in all to those she loved had been
all in all to her. And always, through those years, from her earliest
childhood to her young womanhood, there was Phil, her playmate,
schoolmate, protector, hero, slave. That Phil should be her boy
sweetheart and young man lover had seemed as natural to Kitty as her
relation to her parents. There had never been anyone else but Phil.