What seemed his vanity had nothing to do with thoughts of womankind.

It had been a decorative sense come honestly from picturesque forebears, and indeed from his own mother.
In truth, until the day he had met Louise, or rather until the day of the broncho-busting, and the fateful night on the prairie, he had never grown up.

He was wise with the wisdom of a child--sheer instinct, rightness of mind, real decision of character.

His giggling laugh had been the undisciplined simplicity of the child, which, when he had reached manhood, had never been formalized by conventions.

Something indefinite had marked him until Louise had come, and now he was definite, determined, alive with a new feeling which made his spirit sing--his spirit and his lips; for, as he came from Nolan Doyle's ranch to the Cross Trails, he kept humming to himself, between moments of silence in which he visualized Louise in a hundred attitudes, as he had seen her.