The little room drifted around in Columbine's vague, blank sight. All
seemed to be drifting. She had no solid anchor.

"Any--day you say--the sooner the--better," she whispered.

"Wal, lass, I'm thankin' you," he replied, with voice that sounded afar
to her. "An' I swear, if I didn't believe it's best fer Jack an' you,
why I'd never let you marry.... So we'll set the day. October first!
Thet's the day you was fetched to me a baby--more'n seventeen
years ago."

"October--first--then, dad," she said, brokenly, and she kissed him as
if in token of what she knew she owed him. Then she went out, closing
the door behind her.

Jack, upon seeing her, hastily got up, with more than concern in his
pale face.

"Columbine!" he cried, hoarsely. "How you look!... Tell me. What
happened? Girl, don't tell me you've--you've--"

"Jack Belllounds," interrupted Columbine, in tragic amaze at this truth
about to issue from her lips, "I've promised to marry you--on
October first."

He let out a shout of boyish exultation and suddenly clasped her in his
arms. But there was nothing boyish in the way he handled her, in the
almost savage evidence of possession. "Collie, I'm mad about you," he
began, ardently. "You never let me tell you. And I've grown worse and
worse. To-day I--when I saw you going down there--where that Wilson
Moore is--I got terribly jealous. I was sick. I'd been glad to kill
him!... It made me see how I loved you. Oh, I didn't know. But now ...
Oh, I'm mad for you!" He crushed her to him, unmindful of her struggles;
his face and neck were red; his eyes on fire. And he began trying to
kiss her mouth, but failed, as she struggled desperately. His kisses
fell upon cheek and ear and hair.

"Let me--go!" panted Columbine. "You've no--no--Oh, you might have
waited." Breaking from him, she fled, and got inside her room with the
door almost closed, when his foot intercepted it.

Belllounds was half laughing his exultation, half furious at her escape,
and altogether beside himself.

"No," she replied, so violently that it appeared to awake him to the
fact that there was some one besides himself to consider.

"Aw!" He heaved a deep sigh. "All right. I won't try to get in. Only
listen.... Collie, don't mind my--my way of showing you how I felt. Fact
is, I went plumb off my head. Is that any wonder, you--you darling--when
I've been so scared you'd never have me? Collie, I've felt that you were
the one thing in the world