our interests are just these interests I'm saying. It'll come to you
the moment you want to do a thing against 'em. Oh, I'm not bullying,
my dear. I'll show you just how. If a moment came in your life when
you figgered to carry out something that appealed to you, and your
sense told you it would hurt your mother's proposition right here,
you'd cut it out so quick you'd forget you thought of it. Why?
Because it's you. And you figger that no hurt's going to come to your
mother from you. There isn't a thing in the world to equal a good
woman's loyalty to her mother. Not even the love of a girl for a man.
There's a whole heap of women-folk break up their married lives for
loyalty to a--mother. That's so. And that's why your interests are
surely the interests I got back of my head--because they're the
interests of your mother."

But the girl was uninfluenced by the argument. His words had come
rapidly. But she saw underneath them the great selfish purpose which
was devouring the man. Her antagonistic feeling was unabated. She
shook her head.

"You can't convince me with that talk," she said coldly. "I wouldn't
do a thing to hurt my mother. That's sure. But interests to be
personal need to be backed by desire. I hate all that robbed me of a
father."

The man shook his head.

"We most always get crossways," he said. "And it's the thing I just
hate--with you." Suddenly he laughed aloud. "Say, Jessie, I wonder if
you'd feel different to my argument if I didn't carry sixty pounds too
much weight for my size? I wonder if I stood six feet high, and had a
body like a Greek statue, you'd see the sense of my talk."

The girl missed the earnestness lying behind the man's smiling eyes.
She missed the passionate fire he masked so well. She too laughed.
But her laugh was one of relief.

"Maybe. Who knows," she said lightly.

But, in a moment, regret for her unguarded words followed.

"Before God, Jessie, if I thought by any act of mine I could get you to
feel diff'rent towards me, I'd rake out all the ashes of the things
I've figgered on all these years, to please you. I'd break up all the
hopes and objects, and ambitions I've set up, if it pleased you I
should act that way. I'd live the life you wanted. I'd act the way
you chose.

"Say, Jessie," he went on, with growing passion, "I've wanted to tell
you all there is in the back of my head for months. I've wanted to
tell you the work I'm doing, the