oman in the world to be taken by storm. She was too
individual, her sense of personal independence too strongly developed,
for her ever to be swept off her feet by a passion to which her
own heart offered no response. Instead, it roused her to a definite
consciousness of opposition, and she drew herself away from Tim's eager
arms with a decision there was no mistaking.

"I'm sorry, Tim," she said quietly. "But it's no good pretending I'm in
love with you. I'm not."

He looked at her with moody, dissatisfied eyes.

"I've spoken too soon," he said. "I should have waited. Only I was
afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Yes." He spoke uncertainly. "I've had a feeling that if I let you go,
you'll meet some man down there, at Monkshaven, who'll want to marry you
. . . And I shall lose you! . . . Oh, Sara! I don't ask you to say
you love me--yet. Say that you'll marry me . . . I'd teach you the
rest--you'd learn to love me."

But that fierce, unpremeditated kiss--the first lover's kiss that she
had known--had endowed her with a sudden clarity of vision.

"No," she answered steadily. "I don't know much about love, Tim, but I'm
very sure it's no use trying to manufacture it to order, and--listen,
Tim, dear," the pain in his face making her suddenly all tenderness
again--"if I married you, and afterwards you _couldn't_ teach me as you
think you could, we should only be wretched together."

"I could never be wretched if you were my wife," he answered doggedly.
"I've love enough for two."

She shook her head.

"No, Tim. Don't let's spoil a good friendship by turning it into a
one-sided love-affair."

He smiled rather grimly.

"I'm afraid it's too late to prevent that," he said drily. "But I won't
worry you any more now, dear. Only--I'm not going to accept your answer
as final."

"I wish you would," she urged.

He looked at her curiously. "No man who loves you, Sara, is going to
give you up very easily," he averred. Then, after a moment: "you'll let
me write to you sometimes?"

She nodded soberly.

"Yes--but not love-letters, Tim."

"No--not love-letters."

He lifted her hands and kissed first one and then the other. Then, with
his head well up and his shoulders squared, he went away.

But the sea-blue eyes that had been wont to look out on the world so
gaily had suddenly lost their care-free bravery. They were the eyes of
a man who has looked for the first time into the radiant, sorrowful face
of Love, and read therein