l to the hot cheeks. A pulse of excitement beat in her blood. A few
minutes before she had clung to him despairingly. Now she wanted to run
away and hide.

He stepped close to her and let his hand fall lightly on her arm.

"I've been blind all these years, Lee," he told her. "It's you I love."

She stole a little look at him with shy, incredulous eyes. "Have you
forgotten--Polly?"

"I haven't been in love with her for years, but I didn't know it till
about the Christmas holidays. She was a habit with me. There never was
a sweeter girl than Polly Roubideau. I'll always think a heap of her.
But--well, she had more sense than I had--knew all the time we weren't
cut out for each other." He laughed a little, flushing with
embarrassment. It is not the easiest thing in the world to explain to a
girl why you have neglected her in favor of another.

Lee trembled. The desire was strong in her to seize her happiness while
she could. Surely she had waited long enough for it. But some impulse of
fair play to him or of justice to herself held back the tide of love she
longed to release.

"I think ... you are impulsive," she said at last. "If you have anything
you want to tell me, better wait until ..."

"Not another moment!" he cried. "I've been in torment all night. I ... I
thought I'd lost you forever. You don't care for me, of course. You
never have liked me very well, but--"

"Haven't I?" she breathed softly, not looking at him.

Love irradiated and warmed her. She forgot all she had suffered during
the years she had waited for him to know his mind. She forgot the
privations of the past two days. Her eyes were tender with the mist of
unshed tears.

"It's going to be the biggest thing in my life. If there's any chance at
all I'll wait as long as you like. Of course, the idea's new to you
because you haven't ever thought of me that way--"

"You know so much about it," she replied, a faint smile in her dark
eyes that had in it something of wistfulness, something of self-mockery.
She looked directly at him and let him have it full in the face. "I ought
to be ashamed of it, I suppose, but I'm not. I've thought of you--that
way--lots of times. All girls do, when they meet a man they like."

"You like me?"

She might have told him that her heart had been his ever since that first
week when she had met him and Clanton on the river. She might have added
that all he had needed to do was to whisper "Come" and she would have