"If--if you have to--have it. But I've told you how useless it is."

"Would you mind looking at me, just a minute?" said Steve.

The brown head drooped even lower over the restless fingers. It shook, ever so faintly.

"I'd rather not. . . . I'm listening!"

His laugh lilted recklessly in sheer joy at her refusal.

"Then I'll have to tell you," he stated, "that I'm smiling in spite of the hopelessness. I'm smiling, even though my throat is aching and my lips pretty dry.

"You've just finished trying to argue my man's case from your woman's point of view--one of the hardest, least satisfactory things that could be attempted, no doubt. And if it were possible, I know I'd be loving you right now even more than I did before, just because you've been so entirely unsuccessful at it. Maybe I could straighten out a point or two that must have been not quite clear to you; maybe--but I don't want to argue back at you now.

"You say my telling you all I must tell you can't help my case a little bit. All right--we'll let it stand like that, for the moment. And you say you are going to marry Mr. Wickersham. All right again--but better prophets than either of us have made mistakes before now! If he hadn't forced on me one condition which I would have liked to be different, I'd rather have had to mention no other man at all. This isn't the way I'd have chosen to tell you how much I care. I'd rather have told you, a little at a time, but there isn't time for that now. So maybe it'll sound crude to you. I've not rehea.r.s.ed it with any other woman, you see. And if it does sound that way it won't help me much, either, will it? But you're going to believe what I say!

"You started back a dozen years or so, in order to make your explanation clear. I'm starting there myself, so I'll be sure you understand. You've been grieving because you hurt me--hurt me twice.

Will you stop now, if I tell you that I wouldn't exchange those two--shall we call them wounds--for all the kindnesses of all the other women in the world? I did believe that you didn't think me good enough, that first time. That was why I was cut deeper than you'll ever know, because I knew it was only the truth. I admitted it--remember? I admitted it when I said I was coming back. Well, I'm back now--and I'm still not good enough, and not because I haven't tried to be, either. I'm just not admitting any man alive could be that. But I'm telling you, too, in the same breath, that the man who takes you will have to prove he's a whole lot better--before I stand aside!"

For the first time since he had begun the girl moved. Her head leaped back; she half lifted one hand in protest, but the very gladness in his face silenced her.

"My turn," he reminded her quizzically. "You made the bargain, you know. You've just finished a rather involved bit of reasoning concerning the way other women love, a lot of which I'll have to confess I didn't attend as closely as I should have. Perhaps that's because no man's method of caring has ever interested me a great deal, except my own.

"I loved you when you were a little bit of a girl--because I loved you!

And I love you that way now. Your face was the first woman face I ever looked on--and--really--saw. And since that first morning it's been with me--been with me a lot of times when I didn't have anything else to look up to. I've been less hungry, for thought of you; less thirsty, when the road got pretty long at times. I--I worshiped you, do you hear? Why, I've prayed to you, dumbly, wordlessly, out of black bitterness, when it seemed that any other divinity must be too busy to give any heed to--to the ragged little tad I was. Now do you think I haven't known what it was, long before this, to go on when there wasn't any hope?"

He waited. Her breath came in a long and quivering gasp. And yet he did not realize that she was crying.

"I--I don't think that I want to--listen any more," she faltered.

His face went white at that--and then he was smiling again.

"I told you I'd have chosen to tell you differently," the drawling gentleness was unaltered, "but I'll have to finish this way now. There may not be many chances for me to speak, for I've come back to you almost too late. And I don't want to hurt you; why, I'm going to keep the laughter in your eyes and heart as long as you live. For I thought it would be a woman I'd find when I came back, and I've found you still all girl--all save in those moments when you've seemed half boy to me.

And that is strange, too, isn't it--strange that I never knew how much I wanted you to be like that, until you taught me the wonder of it yourself? My--eyes are stinging. I don't talk quite plainly. My throat is too tight for easy speech. For it's just the old wonder of you, after all--just the same--reverence, isn't it? I'll never let you grow up now. You'll have to stay girl--Boy--all the rest of your life!

I've learned to be fairly sure of myself, but I'm not asking to be sure of you yet. I'd never want to be too sure of you unless all the rest of my whole world had come tumbling down. And then--then I'd need to know always that I could stake my soul on your keeping faith. I'd want to know that I could reach out and find your hand searching for mine in the dark. Your face was the first, girl--it's been the only one.

It'll be the last thing I'll see, the last moment there is sight in my eyes!"

His slow, infinitely gentle voice stopped. He sat head up, before her.

And then her choking sob answered him through that blind silence. He was on his feet then; he started forward, and remembered again. And as if that slim-limbed, huddled little figure had been a boy indeed, he dropped one arm rea.s.suringly over her bowed shoulders.

"Pity, Barbara?" he asked quietly. "Are you crying from pity? Because if it's that--it--it beats me!"

She shook her head vehemently.

"I'm not crying because of anything," she sniffed. "I'm just crying--that' all!"

One hand went searching through pocket after pocket; one elbow came up to shield her eyes. She slid from the tree-trunk and swayed unsteadily, and groped out and found his arm. And it was the boy he had just tried to comfort who curled both hands tightly around his flannel sleeve and hid a wet face against his shoulder.

"I--I'm sorry. I'm so terribly, terribly sorry. I shouldn't have let you start to tell me--I knew it all along. But I'm not pitying--big Stephen O'Mara; it--it was just little Steve who made me cry, I think."

Again that long, sobbing breath. "Will you--will you--I can't find my handkerchief," she gasped.

Long after they had remounted and turned their horses toward the south Barbara rode with head bowed, slim shoulders turned toward the man beside her, a shield for her averted face. From time to time she dabbled furtively at her eyes with the big, crisp square of linen with which Steve had answered the wailed announcement of the loss of her own handkerchief. Once or twice she caught her breath, unsteadily. And yet in spite of the fact that the actual desire was furthest of all things from her heart at that instant, when she did finally grow curious at his long silence and turn to steal a sidelong glance at him, the utter gloom upon Steve's face awoke within her an irresistible impulse to mirth.

It was partly hysterical, partly the sudden realization that he was not the only one who had, that morning, found much in his companion which was insistently boyish. For until then she had not glimpsed this side of that grown-up spirit which, in the boy, had evinced more than once a confidence in self so serenely unshakable that it had bordered on doggedness at times.

In those days it had always irritated her, and set her small fists to clenching in a childish antagonism. More than once she had answered it with superior little, child-woman smiles which had sent him marching, white of face and lip, back through the hedge gap, never realizing herself that her own pique sprang from the belief that his promises of conquest dealt only with material things--splendidly visioned, most vaguely detailed conquests which set his eyes afire but seemed to hold no place for the feminine of her. She had never understood that he, with quite masculine bindness [Transcriber's note: blindness?], had taken for granted her comprehension that each and every conquest was to be solely a glorification of her, any more than she understood now why his black discouragement awakened in her a sudden warmth as different from her old perversity as the pulse in her throat was painful. And yet she couldn't stifle that impulse. She giggled aloud. And when he turned--when he wheeled and encountered her shining eyes, still wet and br.i.m.m.i.n.g above the screen of his own handkerchief, she sensed immediately that he was flushing as little, too-sensitive Steve had flushed years before, when she had laughed at him less kindly.

The girl was not conscious of it; she had no actual realization yet of how very deeply her unwilling readjustment of fundamental values had, in the last twenty-four hours, undermined her hitherto unquestioning acceptance of those inbred standards which, to all her world save Miriam Burrell, were creed and code of conduct. That morning she only knew she was unaccountably glad because there was no malice in her mirth; had she given it thought she would have insisted that, in her heart, there no longer lurked a ghost, ign.o.ble or otherwise, of what had once been a childishly sn.o.bbish belief in her inherent superiority.

And as suddenly as she had giggled she now laughed aloud at the expression she had surprised there on his face. Again, for an instant, the very spontaneity of her swift changing mood gave the situation into her hands.

"Please," she begged him mockingly, "please, I did have to laugh, a little. I had to! It just occurred to me, all in a breath, that perhaps there is another of us who--who hasn't entirely grown up. You looked so morbidly disheartened. And I know it won't sound logical, but all this time during which I supposed you were smiling upon my--my absurd tears with that benign surety of yours, it hurt--hurt like everything--just knowing that it was all so hopeless for you. But now that I have seen that you do understand, do we have to be so gloomy any longer? Are we going to be so tragic, every time we meet? They tell me it is an admission of unformed, unbalanced youth, Mr. O'Mara. And, whether that is so or not, I do know that it is a great strain upon my complexion."

Momentarily her effrontery had given the situation into her hands--but only momentarily. For even while she was speaking the corners of Steve's eyelids began to crinkle; before she had finished mocking at him in a voice that still caught unsteadily in her throat, it was her up-turned face which had grown pink under his gravely amused scrutiny.

"Was it as bad as that?" he asked. "I don't know that I mind the 'benign' part so very much, but as for my 'surety'--well, now I must set you right. I have seen men holding four aces sit with faces so sad and hopeless that they might have earned their fortunes as professional mourners, could their expressions have been rendered permanent. I've seen men with straight flushes bow their heads in sorrow over the cards they held. And I think the one beatific visage it has been my good luck to behold belonged to Fat Joe, one night when the rest of the table had raised his very feet out from under him. He sat and beamed; he radiated good cheer--now and then he chuckled with positively insulting self-confidence, while he was pushing forward all the chips he owned . . . and he had two deuces and four spades to back it up!

"You'll find that most men play that way--most men, I mean, who play for big stakes and play to win. And so--but I've told you already that I'm going to put all my cards on the table, with you. You're going to know, always, the hand I hold. Why, I told you I wasn't sure, even a little bit. I've been smiling just to make it easy for you to understand that I know how to lose, if it has to come to that. And do you suppose I'd have let you weep into my handkerchief, if I'd been half way certain, even? Do you? Because I wouldn't. I have a pair of arms and two shoulders that have been reserved for that purpose--reserved, oh, for years and years."

Barbara had lifted the handkerchief again. The explanation which Steve had begun in half-a.s.sumed soberness ended in drawling, unmistakable gravity.

"Perhaps it wasn't a particularly good parallel to use," he went on, even more slowly, when she failed to answer. "I only wanted to make you see--to have you know----"

Her brown head flashed up then, radiantly eloquent of entire understanding.

"It was a very good parallel," she defended spiritedly. "I liked it immensely. I was thinking that some day when I get involved with Miriam in a particularly erudite discussion, I'd employ it myself. But just now the one point which interests me most is this. Did--did Fat Joe win?"

His single quick word that checked Ragtime brought her roan mount also to a standstill. Lightly Steve swung out and took both her gloved hands in a grip that made her draw back a little.

"If you weren't the _girl_ to whom I'd just told my love," he stated, "I'd be telling you, right now, that I like you best of all the _men_ I know!" He sat and looked at her. "And since I don't remember clearly whether I've said it already this morning, I'll chance repeating it.

You're the one prettiest thing in all this world--and it's not an unhandsome world this morning, either."

For a moment longer her mood lasted while she surveyed him with dark-eyed audacity, head poised on one side in that att.i.tude of wholly happy intimacy with which he had seen her many times greet Caleb Hunter.

"For a man who claims to be strictly an amateur," she murmured, "I can only reply--you do extremely well, sir!"

And then, as if her words had rung too cheaply flippant in her own ears, she took both hands impetuously from his. She started her horse abruptly. And it was yards before he overtook her, rods before she dropped back to a walk. Her face had become wistful in its earnestness.

"That was pretty, and sincere, and--and like you," she mused. "I wonder why my answer sounded not quite so innately fine? Do you suppose it was because I've already become accustomed to meeting flippancy with flippancy? For if that isn't the reason then how would you explain my--my persistent tendency toward frivolity with you?

Because it exists, you know. Truly it does! If I yielded to the impulse that is always with me, I--I'd coquette with you, disgracefully. Doesn't that--even surprise you? Now you _are_ laughing at me . . . why, you weren't listening at all!"

His shamefacedness was an admission of guilt, but he shook his head in contradiction.

"Not at you," he corrected her. "I wasn't laughing very heartily, or very steadily, was I? And I'm trying to listen; I am trying to pay attention to everything you say. It just isn't an easy thing to do, that's all, when--when I'm looking at you, too. But I promised you that you were always going to be sure of me. Couldn't that be reason enough; can't we just say you'd sensed it, yourself, even without my telling you so?"

She bobbed her head, most anxious for his gravity now that she was not sure whether it was real or not.

"I knew that must be it," she argued seriously. "I thought it must be, anyway. I just feel safe with you. And yet I don't want you ever to believe, either, that I am deliberately playing. It's just--oh, in my heart I know that you haven't any more than those two deuces, and--and the deal is mine. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? They always say it in--in books, Mr. O'Mara. They always agree to be the 'best of friends,' and it reads so funny and flat. But that is exactly what I am trying to put into words. It couldn't be anything more, ever, and yet I want this friendship which is different from everything I've ever known before. I like you very, very much. Listen, and I'll make a confession, too! I used to watch and hope you'd come back, after I'd sent you home, heart-sick, years ago. Do you suppose we might say the--the 'best of friends' in real life, too, and not sound instantly absurd?"

"We might try it out," he suggested.