g delightful.
It would have been so easy to surrender--it was so hard to resist.

"Say yes now," he repeated, drawing her close at last and breathing the
question into her ear. "You shall have time to think--you shall ask your
own heart, and if it does not confirm your words you will be released
from your promise."

They heard the footsteps of her father approaching, and Transley waited
no longer for an answer. He turned her face to his; he pressed his lips
against hers.

CHAPTER IX

Zen thought over the events of that evening until they became a blur in
her memory. Her principal recollection was that she had been quite swept
off her feet. Transley had interpreted her submission as assent, and
she had not corrected him in the vital moment when they stood before her
father that night in the deep shadow of the veranda.

"Y.D.," Transley had said, "your consent and your blessing! Zen and I
are to be married as soon as she can be ready."

That was the moment at which she should have spoken, but she did not.
She, who had prided herself that she would make a race of it--she,
who had always been able to slip out of a predicament in the nick of
time--stood mutely by and let Transley and her father interpret her
silence as consent. She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not
sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the
matter quite out of her hands. And yet she could not bring herself to
feel resentment toward him; that was the strangest part of it. It seemed
that she had come under his domination; that she even had to think as he
would have her think.

In the darkness she could not see her father's face, for which she was
sorry; and he could not see hers, for which she was glad. There was a
long moment of tense silence before she heard him say,

"Well, well! I had a hunch it might come to that, but I didn't reckon
you youngsters would work so fast."

"This was a stake worth working fast for," Transley was saying, as he
shook Y.D.'s hand. "I wouldn't trade places with any man alive." And Zen
was sure he meant exactly what he said.

"She's a good girl, Transley," her father commented; "a good girl, even
if a bit obstrep'rous at times. She's got spirit, Transley, an' you'll
have to handle her with sense. She's a--a thoroughbred!"

Y.D. had reached his arms toward his daughter, and at these words he
closed them about her. Zen had never known her father to be emotional;
she had known