ing of an
effort, "It was you, Becky."

"Me? When?" She turned on him her startled gaze.

"Do you remember at Christmas--oh, ten years ago--and your grandfather
had a party for you. There was mistletoe in the hall, and we danced
and stopped under the mistletoe----"

"I remember, Randy--how long ago it seems."

"Yet ten years isn't really such a long time, is it, Becky? I was only
a little boy, but I told myself then that I would never kiss any other
girl. I thought then that--that some day I might ask you to marry me.
I--I had a wild dream that I might try to make you love me. I didn't
know then that poverty is a millstone about a man's neck." He gave a
bitter laugh.

Becky's breath came quickly. "Oh, Randy," she said, "poverty wouldn't
have had anything to do with it--not if we had--cared----"

"I care," said Randy, "and I think the first time I knew how much I
cared was when I kissed that other girl. Somehow you came to me that
night, a little white thing, so fine and different, and I loathed her."

He was standing now--tall and lean and black-haired, but with the look
of race on his thin face, a rather princely chap in spite of his shabby
clothes. "Of course you don't care," he said; "I think if I had money
I should try to make you. But I haven't the right. I had thought
that, perhaps, if no other man came that some time I might----"

Becky picked up her riding crop, and as she talked she tapped her hoot
in a sort of staccato accompaniment.

"That other man has come," _tap-tap_, "he kissed me," _tap-tap_, "and
made me love him," _tap-tap_, "and he has gone away--and he hasn't
asked me to marry him."

One saw the Indian in Randy now, in the lifted head, the square-set
jaw, the almost cruel keenness of the eyes.

"Of course it is George Dalton," he said.

"Yes."

"I could kill him, Becky."

She laughed, ruefully. "For what? Perhaps he thinks I'm not a nice
sort of girl--like the one you kissed----"

"For God's sake, Becky."

He sat down on a flat rock. He was white, and shaking a little. He
wanted more than anything else in the wide world to kill George Dalton.
Of course in these days such things were preposterous. But he had
murder in his heart.

"I blame myself," Becky said, _tap-tap_, "I should have known that a
man doesn't respect," _tap-tap_, "a woman he can kiss."

He took the riding crop forcibly out of her hands. "Look at me, look
at me, Becky, do you love him?"

She