line? Would be content if I were sweet on
Miss Phillips? Wouldn't you be jealous if I were to visit the widow?
And what would you say if I were seized with a consuming passion for
Louie? Come, Jack--don't row; don't be quite insane. Sit down again,
and let's drop the subject."

"I won't drop the subject," growled Jack. "You needn't try to argue
yourself out of it. You know very well that I got her first."

"Why, man, at this rate, you might get every woman in America. You seem
to think that this is Utah."

"Come, no humbug, Macrorie. You know very well what I am to that
girl."

"You! you!" I cried. "Why, you have told me already that she has found
you out. Hang it, man! if it comes to that, what are you in her eyes
compared with me? You've been steadily humbugging her ever since you
first knew her, and she's found it out But I come to her as the
companion of the darkest hour of her life, as the one who saved her
from death. You--good Lord!--do you pretend to put yourself in
comparison with me? You, with your other affairs, and your conscious
falsity to her, with me! Why, but for me, she would be drifting down
the river, and lying stark and dead on the beach of Anticosti. That is
what I have done for her. And what have you done? I might laughed over
the joke of it before I knew her; but now, since I know her, and her,
when you force me to say what you have done, I declare to you that you
have wronged her, and cheated her, and humbugged her, and she knows
it, and you know it, and I know it. These things may be all very well
for a lark; but, when you pretend to make a serious matter of them,
they look ugly. Confound it! have you lost your senses?"

"You'll see whether I've lost my senses or not," said Jack, fiercely.

"You've got trouble enough on your shoulders, Jack," said I. "Don't
get into any more. You actually have the face to claim no less than
three women. Yes, four. I must count Louie, also. If this question
were about Louie, wouldn't you be just as fierce?"

Jack did not answer.

"Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you say that I had violated your confidence?
Wouldn't you declare that it was a wrong to yourself, and a bitter
injury? If I had saved Louie's life, and then suddenly fallen in love
with her wouldn't you have warned me off in the same way? You know you
would. But will you listen to reason? You can't have them all. You must
choose one of them. Take Miss Phillips, and be true to your first vow.
Take the wi