ause you make me!"

"I don't want you to go, Jack."

"You said it. You said that the folk in the country were fit for
nothing better. You always speak like that. You think no more of me
than of those doos in the cot. You think I am nobody at all. I'll show
you different."

All my troubles came out in hot little spurts of speech. She coloured
up as I spoke, and looked at me in her queer half-mocking, half-petting
fashion.

"Oh, I think so little of you as that?" said she. "And that is the
reason why you are going away? Well then, Jack, will you stay if I
am--if I am kind to you?"

We were face to face and close together, and in an instant the thing was
done. My arms were round her, and I was kissing her, and kissing her,
and kissing her, on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, and pressing her to
my heart, and whispering to her that she was all, all, to me, and that I
could not be without her. She said nothing, but it was long before she
turned her face aside, and when she pushed me back it was not very hard.

"Why, you are quite your rude, old, impudent self!" said she, patting
her hair with her two hands. "You have tossed me, Jack; I had no idea
that you would be so forward!"

But all my fear of her was gone, and a love tenfold hotter than ever was
boiling in my veins. I took her up again, and kissed her as if it were
my right.

"You are my very own now!" I cried. "I shall not go to Berwick, but
I'll stay and marry you."

But she laughed when I spoke of marriage.

"Silly boy! Silly boy!" said she, with her forefinger up; and then when
I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and
was off into the house.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHOOSING OF JIM.

And then there came those ten weeks which were like a dream, and are so
now to look back upon. I would weary you were I to tell you what passed
between us; but oh, how earnest and fateful and all-important it was at
the time! Her waywardness; her ever-varying moods, now bright, now
dark, like a meadow under drifting clouds; her causeless angers; her
sudden repentances, each in turn filling me with joy or sorrow: these
were my life, and all the rest was but emptiness. But ever deep down
behind all my other feelings was a vague disquiet, a fear that I was
like the man who set forth to lay hands upon the rainbow, and that the
real Edie Calder, however near she might seem, was in truth for ever
beyond my reach.

For she was