on you. I'd have warned
you, only ..."

He stumbled. She encouraged him: "Why didn't you?"

She didn't like Trego--that was understood--but sympathy was very
sweet to her just then, whatever its source, and she had no real
objection to disparagement of her slanderer, either.

"Well, it wasn't my fight. And I didn't know how you'd take
interference. You looked pretty well able to take care of yourself--in
fact, you are. And then--I don't reckon it's going to do me any good
to say this; but I might as well make a clean breast of it--I was just
selfish enough to have a sneaking sort of hope, deep down, that maybe
you'd find it so unpleasant you'd quit."

"Mr. Trego!" No more than that; he had taken her breath away.

"I guess that does sound funny," he admitted, evading her indignant
eye. "You can't trust me, ever. I always say things the wrong way;
that's the best thing I do."

"If it's possible for you to explain . . ."

"It's possible, all right, but it's anything but easy. What I meant
was . . . Well, any fool could see that as long as you were so strong
for this society racket I didn't stand much show."

"Show?"

"Of making good with you. Oh, look here, what's the use of beating
about the bush? I'm a rude, two-fisted animal, and that's all against
me. I never could flummux up my meaning successfully with a lot of
words like--well, name no names. All the same, it's pretty hard for a
fellow who knows the girl he's sweet on isn't crazy about him to
come out in plain talk and say he loves her."

She was dumb. She stared incredulously at his heavy, sincere,
embarrassed face, as if it were something abnormal, almost
supernatural, a hallucination.

"Meaning" he faltered, "I mean to say--of course--I love you,
Sar--er--ah--Miss Manwaring--and I think I can make you happy--"

He was making heavy weather of his simple declaration, labouring like
an old-fashioned square-rigger in a beam sea.

"If you'll marry me, that is," he concluded in a breath, with obvious
relief if with a countenance oddly shadowed in the staring moonlight
by the heat of his distress.

She tried, she meant to give him his answer without delay; it were
kinder. But she found it impossible; the negative stuck stubbornly in
her throat. She knew it would stab him deep. He wasn't the man to take
love lightly; his emotions were anything but on the surface; their
wounds would be slow to heal.

And in spite of the positive animus she had all alon