"No. I want to go back to Wyoming. Where I was born. Only for a
few weeks."

And in that "only for a few weeks" there lay some of the unspoken
things. That he would miss her and come back quickly to her. That
she would miss him, and that subconsciously he knew it. And behind
that, too, a promise. He would come back to her.

"Only for a few weeks," he repeated. "I thought perhaps, if you
wouldn't mind my writing to you, now and then--I write a rotten
hand, you know. Most medical men do."

"I should like it very much," she said, primly.

She felt suddenly very lonely, as though he had already gone, and
slightly resentful, not at him but at the way things happened. And
then, too, everyone knew that once a Westerner always a Westerner.
The West always called its children. Not that she put it that way.
But she had a sort of vision, gained from the moving pictures, of a
country of wide spaces and tall mountains, where men wore quaint
clothing and the women rode wild horses and had the dash she knew
she lacked. She was stirred by vague jealousy.

"You may never come back," she said, casually. "After all, you
were born there, and we must seem very quiet to you."

"Quiet!" he exclaimed. "You are heavenly restful and comforting.
You--" he checked himself and got up. "Then I'm to write, and you
are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is
that right?"