t
disappointment.

"I mean, Boone Wellver, that I don't know how to take you. Sometimes I
think you really like me--lots. Not just lumped in with everybody that
you can manage to call a friend. I have no use for lukewarm
friendships--I'd rather have none at all. You seem to be in deadly fear
of spoiling me with your lordly favour."

The boy stood before her with a face that had grown ashen. It seemed
incredible to him that she could so misconstrue his attitude; an
attitude based on hard and studied self-control.

"You think that, do you?" he inquired in a low voice, almost fierce in
its intensity. "Do you think I'm fool enough not to take thankfully what
I can get, without crying for the moon?"

"What has the moon to do with it?" she demanded.

But the vow of silence which Boone had taken with the grave solemnity of
a Trappist monk was no longer a dependable bulwark. The dam had broken.

"Just this," he said soberly. "You're as far out of my reach as the moon
itself. You say I seem afraid to tell you that I really like you. I _am_
afraid. I'm so mortally afraid that I'd sworn I'd never tell you.... God
knows that I couldn't start talking about that without saying the whole
of it. I can't say I like you because I don't like you--I love you--I
love you like--" The rapid flood of words broke off in abrupt silence.
Then the boy raised his hands and let them fall again in a gesture of
despair. "There isn't anything in the world to liken it to," he
declared.

Anne's eyes had widened in astonishment. She said nothing at all, and
Boone waited, steeling himself against the expected sentence of exile.
Nothing less than banishment, he had always told himself, could be the
penalty of such an outburst.

"Now," he continued in a bitter desperation, "I've done what I said I'd
never do. I've foresworn myself and told you that I love you. I might as
well finish ... because I reckon I can guess what _you'll_ say
presently. From the first day when you came here, I've been in love with
you.... I've never seen the evening star rise up over the Kaintuck'
Ridges that I haven't looked at it ... and thought of it as your own
star.... I've never seen it either that I haven't said to myself, 'You
might as well love that star,' and I've tried just to live from hour to
hour when I was with you and not think about the day when you'd be gone
away."

Anne still stood with wide and questioning eyes, but no anger had come
into them yet. Her