"I hope I'm not a coward. All normal men are brave. That's nothing. What
else am I--to you?"

"Interesting. More interesting than--than any one I ever saw."

"If you feel that, you don't want to send me out of your life, do
you?--after you've stood by and sheltered me from danger?"

"No-o. I don't want to send you out of my life. But----"

"There's only one way in which you can keep me and I can keep
you--circumstanced as we are. We must be husband and wife."

"Oh!" The girl covered her face with both hands. The world was on fire
around her.

"I frighten you. Yet you might have consented to marry that other Smith.
You went to meet him, to decide whether he was possible."

"I know. But I see now, if he'd kept his appointment, it would have ended
in nothing, even if--if he had been pleased with me. I couldn't have
brought myself to say 'yes'."

"How can you be certain?"

"Because"--Annesley spoke almost in a whisper--"because he wasn't _you_."

Smith snatched her clasped hands and kissed them. The warm touch of the
man's lips gave the girl a new, mysterious sensation. No man had ever
kissed even her hands. Suddenly she felt sure that what she felt must be