driving towards great wealth, is just
because I've sort of built up a hope you'd some day help me spend it.
But you've never given me a chance. Not a chance. I had to tell you
this to-day. It's got to be now--now--or never. I'm going away on
work that has to be done, and I can't just wait another day till I've
told you these things.

"If you'd marry me, Jessie," the man continued, while the girl remained
mute, dumbfounded by the suddenness with which the passionate outburst
had come, "I'd hand you all you can ever ask in life. We'd quit this
God-forgotten land, and set up home where the sun's most always
shining, and our money counts for all that we guess is life. Don't
turn me down for my shape. Think of what it means. We can quit this
land with a fortune that would equal the biggest in the world. I know.
I hold the door to it. Your mother and I. I just love you with a
strength you'll never understand. All those things I've talked of are
just nothing to the way I love you. Say, child----"

The girl broke in on him with a shake of the head. It was deliberate,
final. Even more final than her spoken words which sought for
gentleness.

"Don't--just don't say another word," she cried.

She started. For an instant her beautiful eyes flashed to the window.
Then they came back to the dark eyes which were glowing before her. In
a moment it seemed to her they had changed from the pleading, burning
passion to something bordering on the sinister.

"I don't love you. I never could love you, Murray," she said a little
helplessly.

There was the briefest possible pause, and a sound reached them from
outside. But the man seemed oblivious to everything but the passion
consuming him. And the manner of that seemed to have undergone a
sudden change.

"I know," he broke out with furious bitterness and brutal force. "It's
because of that man. That Kars----"

"Don't dare to say that," Jessie cried, with heightened color and eyes
dangerously wide. "You haven't a right to speak that way. You----"

"Haven't I?" There was no longer emotion in the man's voice. Neither
anger, nor any gentler feeling. It was the tone Jessie always knew in
Murray McTavish. It was steady, and calm, and, just now, grievously
hurtful.

"Well, maybe I haven't, since you say so. But I'm not taking your
answer now. I can't. I'll ask you again--next year, maybe. Maybe
you'll feel different then. I hope so."

He swung about wi