speech could save me from going
hopelessly silly.

She turned her eyes calmly toward me, and--their power had not weakened,
at all events. I felt as if I had taken hold of a battery with all the
current turned on.

"Why, I suppose I like it here in summer. You're here, yourself; don't you
like it?"

I wanted to say something smart, there, and I have thought of a dozen
bright remarks since; but at the time I couldn't think of a blessed thing
that came within a mile of being either witty or epigrammatic. Love-making
was all new to me, and I saw right then that I wasn't going to shine.
I finally did remark that I should like it better if her father would be
less belligerent and more peaceful as a neighbor.

"You told me, last summer, that you enjoyed keeping up the feud," she
reminded, smiling whimsically down at me.

She made a wrong play there; she let me see that she did remember some
things that I said. It boosted my courage a notch.

"But that was last summer," I countered. "One can change one's view-point
a lot in twelve months. Anyway, you knew all along that I didn't mean a
word of it."

"Indeed!" It was evident that she didn't quite like having me take that
tone.

"Yes, 'indeed'!" I repeated, feeling a rebellion against circumstances and
at convention growing stronger within me. Why couldn't I put her on my
horse and carry her off and keep her always? I wondered crazily. That was
what I wanted to do.

"Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?" she mused, biting her
pencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can't remember how many times
three goes into twenty-seven.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more." I set my teeth, closed my
eyes--mentally--and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come
to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. "For
instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a
preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether
you want to or not, because I shall _make_ you, I mean every word of
it--and a lot more."

That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn't dare
breathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, all
golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight
together that they ached afterward.

The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraid
to look. "Do you? How very odd!" Her voice sounded queer, as if it had
been squeezed d