abandoned face. It brought about a change so prompt that it disturbed
the Second Deputy.

"You 're--you 're not tied up already, are you?" he had hesitatingly
demanded. "You 're not married?"

"No, I 'm not tied up!" she had promptly and fiercely responded. "My
life 's my own--my own!"

"Then why can't you marry me?" the practical-minded man had asked.

"I could!" she had retorted, with the same fierceness as before. Then
she had stood looking at him out of wistful and unhappy eyes. "I
could--if you only understood, if you could only help me the way I want
to be helped!"

She had clung to his arm with a tragic forlornness that seemed to leave
her very wan and helpless. And he had found it ineffably sweet to
enfold that warm mass of wan helplessness in his own virile strength.

She asked for time, and he was glad to consent to the delay, so long as
it did not keep him from seeing her. In matters of the emotions he was
still as uninitiated as a child. He found himself a little dazed by
the seemingly accidental tenderness, by the promises of devotion, in
which she proved so lavish. Morning by jocund morning he built up his
airy dreams, as carefully as she built up her nut-brown plaits. He
grew heavily light-headed with his plans for the future. When she
pleaded with him never to leave her, never to trust her too much, he
patted her thin cheek and asked when she was going to name the day.
From that finality she still edged away, as though her happiness itself