posals. Well, I
haven't, and I'm like a fish out of water. Besides, this ain't a
proposal. It's a peculiar situation, that's all, and I'm in a corner.
I've got enough plain horse-sense to know a man ain't supposed to argue
marriage with a girl as a reason for getting acquainted with her. And
right there was where I was in the hole. Number one, I can't get
acquainted with you in the office. Number two, you say you won't see
me out of the office to give me a chance. Number three, your reason is
that folks will talk because you work for me. Number four, I just got
to get acquainted with you, and I just got to get you to see that I
mean fair and all right. Number five, there you are on one side the
gate getting ready to go, and me here on the other side the gate pretty
desperate and bound to say something to make you reconsider. Number
six, I said it. And now and finally, I just do want you to reconsider."

And, listening to him, pleasuring in the sight of his earnest,
perturbed face and in the simple, homely phrases that but emphasized
his earnestness and marked the difference between him and the average
run of men she had known, she forgot to listen and lost herself in her
own thoughts. The love of a strong man is ever a lure to a normal
woman, and never more strongly did Dede feel the lure than now, looking
across the closed gate at Burning Daylight. Not that she would ever
dream of marrying him--she had a score of reasons against it; but why
not at least see more of him? He was certainly not repulsive to her.
On the contrary, she liked him, had always liked him from the day she
had first seen him and looked upon his lean Indian face and into his
flashing Indian eyes. He was a figure of a man in more ways than his
mere magnificent muscles. Besides, Romance had gilded him, this
doughty, rough-hewn adventurer of the North, this man of many deeds and
many millions, who had come down out of the Arctic to wrestle and fight
so masterfully with the men of the South.

Savage as a Red Indian, gambler and profligate, a man without morals,
whose vengeance was never glutted and who stamped on the faces of all
who opposed him--oh, yes, she knew all the hard names he had been
called. Yet she was not afraid of him. There was more than that in
the connotation of his name. Burning Daylight called up other things
as well. They were there in the newspapers, the magazines, and the
books on the Klondike. When all was sai