sheeps eyes at her."

"That is a highly original view," she said, laughing, feeling that she
ought to be offended, but disarmed by his ingenuousness. "And so you
think that love and hate are inseparable passions."

"I reckon you can't know what real love is unless you have hated, ma'am.
Some folks say they get through life without hatin' anybody, but if
you'll look around an' watch them, you'll find they're mostly an
unfeelin' kind. You ain't one of them kind, ma'am. I've watched you, an'
I've seen that you've got a heap of spirit. Some of these days you're
goin' to wake up. An' when you do, you'll find out what love is."

"Don't you think I love Mr. Masten?" she said, looking at him
unwaveringly.

He looked as fairly back at her. "I don't reckon you do, ma'am. Mebbe you
think so, but you don't."

"What makes you think so?" she demanded, defiantly.

"Why, the way you look at him, ma'am. If I was engaged to a girl an' she
looked at me as critical as you look at him, sometimes, I'd sure feel
certain that I'd drawed the wrong card."

Still her eyes did not waver. She began to sense his object in
introducing this subject, and she was determined to make him feel that
his conclusions were incorrect--as she knew they were.

"That is an example of your wonderful power of observation," she said,
"the kind you were telling me about, which makes you able to make such
remarkable deductions. But if you are no more correct in the others than
you are in trying to determine the state of my feelings toward Mr.
Masten, you are entirely wrong. I _do_ love Mr. Masten!"

She spoke vehemently, for she thought herself very much in earnest.

But he grinned. "You're true blue," he said, "an' you've got the grit to
tell where you stand. But you're mistaken. You couldn't love Masten."

"Why?" she said, so intensely curious that she entirely forgot to think
of his impertinence in talking thus to her. "Why can't I love Mr.
Masten?"

He laughed, and reddened. "Because you're goin' to love me, ma'am," he
said, gently.

She would have laughed if she had not felt so indignant. She would have
struck him as she had struck Chavis had she not been positive that behind
his words was the utmost respect--that he did not intend to be
impertinent--that he seemed as natural as he had been all along. She
would have exhibited scorn if she could have summoned it. She did nothing
but stare at him in genuine amazement. She was going to be severe with