ity with which he had approached her father, he
now blurted out his whole heart to her. He told her how he had loved
her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken together at the
church picnic. Did she remember it? How he had sat and worshiped her,
and nothing else, at church! How her voice in the church choir had
sounded like an angel's; how his poverty and his uncertain future had
kept him from seeing her often, lest he should be tempted to betray his
hopeless passion. How as soon as he realized that he had a position,
that his love for her need not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes,
he came to tell her ALL. He did not even dare to hope! But she would
HEAR him at least, would she not?

Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple, outspoken
declaration. In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at her pink cheeks
in the glass, and stopped to look out of the window. The room was filled
with his love--it was encompassing her--and, despite his shy attitude,
seemed to be almost embracing her. But she managed at last to turn upon
him a face that was now as white and grave as his own was eager and
glowing.

"Sit down," she said gently.

He did so obediently, but wonderingly. She then opened the piano and
took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose sheets
of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Thus
intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and for the first
time raised her eyes to his.

"Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt! There!--not so near; you
can hear what I have to say well enough where you are. That will do."

Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat
down.

"Now," said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before
her, "I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--or at least
SAY it--but I do. There! But because I do believe you--it seems to me
all wrong! For the very reasons that you give for not having spoken to
me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same reasons
why you should not speak to me now. You see, all this time you have let
nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me. In everybody's eyes
YOU and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive,
college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally
came here to this hotel as customers. In everybody's eyes I have been
only the rich hotel-keeper's popular daughter