"When you turn that collar up again I am going," said I.

So she sprang away from me, laughing, and quick as I reached out to
seize her, she avoided me.

"You know I can't catch you," I cried, taunting her, "so I must wait."

As she stood there before me quietly, her hands clasped, her eyes
looking up into mine, I saw how fair she was, and I wondered. The
picture of Weston in the woods, standing off there gazing at me, came
back then, and with it a vague feeling of fear and distrust. I saw
myself as Weston saw me, and I marvelled.

"Mary," I said, "this morning up there in the woods I told Robert
Weston everything, and he stood off just as you are standing now. It
seemed to me he wondered how it could be true, and now I wonder too.
Maybe it's all a mistake."

"It's not a mistake, Mark," the girl said, and she came to me again and
put a hand on each shoulder and looked up. "If I did not care for you
I'd never have given you the promise I did last night. But I do care
for you, Mark, more than for anyone else in the world. You are big and
strong and good--that's why--it's all any woman can ask. You are true,
Mark--and that's more than most men----"

"But, Mary, there's Tim," I protested, for I did not care to usurp to
myself the sum of all the virtues allotted to my sex.

"Tim?" said she lightly, as though she had never heard of him.