s get awry. I guess you
can't ever feel just alone now--whatever happens."

Keeko's eyes were very soft, very tender as she looked up into Marcel's
face.

"It's good to hear that. It's good to feel that," she said gently. "And
I do feel it," she added with a deep sigh. "I've a whole heap to thank
God for, and, if it's not wrong to put it that way, still more to thank
you for. I just don't know how to say it all. But just as long as I live
I----"

"Cut it right out, Keeko. Cut it right out."

Marcel spoke hastily. He spoke almost roughly. He was in no frame of
mind to listen complacently to any words of thanks from this girl.
Thanks? If thanks were due it was from him. She had given him her trust
and confidence. She had given him moments in his life such as he had
never dreamed could fall to the lot of any man. In the firelight he
flushed deeply at the thought, and again impulse stirred and nearly
overwhelmed him.

"I just can't stand thanks from you, Keeko," he said impulsively.
"Thanks only need to come from folks whom you help feeling you don't
fancy doing it. You've handed me the sort of happiness that makes a
feller feel like getting onto his hands and knees and thanking God for.
Say, I can't talk to you same as I fancy to, and I guess it's not my
fault. You don't know who I am, or a thing about me. And you can't hand
me much more about yourself. Still, I sort of feel the time'll come when
we can open out things. What I want to say is, you've handed me a trust
that isn't hardly natural. You've chased this country with a feller who
might be any old thing from a 'hold-up' to a 'gun-artist,' and they're
around in plenty north of 60 deg.. And it's the big white heart inside you
made you act that way, and I sort of feel that big white heart is still
my care, even after we've made good-bye at that old moose head. I wish
to death I could say the things I fancy right, but I just can't, and
it's no use in talking. But don't you ever dare to hand me thanks, or
I'll have to get right up and break things."

Keeko's reply was a low thrilling laugh, full of a gentle gladness which
she cared not if he read.

"Maybe you haven't said the things the way you fancy saying them," she
said, in her gentle fashion. "But you've said them the way I'd have you
say them. But you're right. There's folks in a person's life you can't
thank, you haven't a right to thank, and maybe that's how we're fixed.
You've jumped right into my life w