, I think,
with arrears of life to make up. You've struck me, from the very
first, as too alive, too sensitive, too responsive to things, to get
the fullest measure out of life by remaining here on the prairie, in
what are, after all, really pioneer conditions. You've known the other
kind of life, as well as I have, and it will always be calling to you.
And if that call means anything to you, and the--the change we've
spoken of is on its way, or for some unexpected reason has to come,
I'm--well, I'm going to take the bit in my teeth right here and tell
you that I love you more than you imagine and a good deal more, I
suppose, than the law allows!"

He pushed my hand aside when I held it up to stop him.

"I may as well say it, for this is as good a time and place as we'll
ever have, and I can't go around with my teeth shut on the truth any
longer. I know you've got your three little tots down there, and I
love 'em about as much as you do. And it would seem like giving a
little meaning and purpose to life to know that I had the chance of
doing what I could to make you and to make them happy. I've--"

But I couldn't let him go on.

"It's no use, Peter," I cried with a little choke in my voice which I
couldn't control. "It's no earthly use. I've known you liked me, and
it's given me a warm little feeling down in one corner of my heart.
But I could never allow it to be more than a corner. I like you,
Peter, and I like you a lot. You're wonderful. In some ways you're the
most adorable man I've ever known in all my life. That's a dangerous
thing to say, but it's the truth and I may as well say it. It even
hurts a little to remember that I've traded on your chivalry, though
that's the one thing in life you _can_ trade on without reproof or
demand for repayment. But as I told you before, I'm one of those
neck-or-nothing women, one of those single-track women, who can't have
their tides of traffic going two ways at once. And if I'm in a mix-up,
or a maelstrom, or whatever you want to call it, I'm in it. That's
where I belong. It would never, never do to drag an innocent outsider
into that mixed-up mess of life, simply because I imagined it could
make me a little more comfortable to have him there."

Peter sat thinking over what I'd said. There were no heroics, no
chest-pounding, no suggestion of romantically blighted lives and
broken hearts.

"That means, of course, that I'll have to climb out," Peter finally
and very pro