r no opportunity to interrupt, but rushed on
impetuously: "We will sail away across that ocean to wherever you will
take me. To Ceylon and Tokio and San Francisco, to Naples and New
York, to Greece and Athens. They are all near. They are all yours.
Will you accept them and me?" He smiled appealingly, but most
miserably. For though he had spoken lightly and with confidence, it
was to conceal the fact that he was not at all confident. As he had
read in her eyes her refusal of his pony, he had read, even as he
spoke, her refusal of himself. When he ceased speaking the girl
answered:

"If I say that what you tell me makes me proud, I am saying too
little." She shook her head firmly, with an air of finality that
frightened Hemingway. "But what you ask--what you suggest is
impossible."

"You don't like me?" said Hemingway.

"I like you very much," returned the girl, "and, if I don't seem
unhappy that it can't be, it is because I always have known it can't
be--"

"Why can't it be?" rebelled Hemingway. "I don't mean that I can't
understand your not wanting to marry me, but if I knew your objection,
maybe, I could beat it down."

Again, with the same air of finality, the girl moved her head slowly,
as though considering each word; she began cautiously.

"I cannot tell you the reason," she said, "because it does not concern
only myself."

"If you mean you care for some one else," pleaded Hemingway, "that does
not frighten me at all." It did frighten him extremely, but, believing
that a faint heart never won anything, he pretended to be brave.

"For you," he boasted, "I would go down into the grave as deep as any
man. He that hath more let him give. I know what I offer. I know I
love you as no other man--"

The girl backed away from him as though he had struck her. "You must
not say that," she commanded.

For the first time he saw that she was moved, that the fingers she
laced and unlaced were trembling. "It is final!" exclaimed the girl.
"I cannot marry--you, or any one. I--I have promised. I am not free."

"Nothing in the world is final," returned Hemingway sharply, "except
death." He raised his hat and, as though to leave her, moved away.
Not because he admitted defeat, but because he felt that for the
present to continue might lose him the chance to fight again. But, to
deliver an ultimatum, he turned back.

"As long as you are alive, and I am alive," he told her, "all things
are possible. I