what you satisfy me. I sure know you're the wife for me. But how
about myself? Do you know me well enough know your own mind?" He
shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, and I ain't going to take
chances on it now. You've got to know for sure whether you think you
could get along with me or not, and I'm playing a slow conservative
game. I ain't a-going to lose for overlooking my hand."

This was love-making of a sort beyond Dede's experience. Nor had she
ever heard of anything like it. Furthermore, its lack of ardor carried
with it a shock which she could overcome only by remembering the way
his hand had trembled in the past, and by remembering the passion she
had seen that very day and every day in his eyes, or heard in his
voice. Then, too, she recollected what he had said to her weeks
before: "Maybe you don't know what patience is," he had said, and
thereat told her of shooting squirrels with a big rifle the time he and
Elijah Davis had starved on the Stewart River.

"So you see," he urged, "just for a square deal we've got to see some
more of each other this winter. Most likely your mind ain't made up
yet--"

"But it is," she interrupted. "I wouldn't dare permit myself to care
for you. Happiness, for me, would not lie that way. I like you, Mr.
Harnish, and all that, but it can never be more than that."

"It's because you don't like my way of living," he charged, thinking in
his own mind of the sensational joyrides and general profligacy with
which the newspapers had credited him--thinking this, and wondering
whether or not, in maiden modesty, she would disclaim knowledge of it.

To his surprise, her answer was flat and uncompromising.

"No; I don't."

"I know I've been brash on some of those rides that got into the
papers," he began his defense, "and that I've been travelling with a
lively crowd."

"I don't mean that," she said, "though I know about it too, and can't
say that I like it. But it is your life in general, your business.
There are women in the world who could marry a man like you and be
happy, but I couldn't. And the more I cared for such a man, the more
unhappy I should be. You see, my unhappiness, in turn, would tend to
make him unhappy. I should make a mistake, and he would make an equal
mistake, though his would not be so hard on him because he would still
have his business."

"Business!" Daylight gasped. "What's wrong with my business? I play
fair and square. There's n