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is gaze. "Thank you," she said. "The honesty of that admission would have counted a good deal in your favor had the thing been possible." The man straightened himself and clenched one hand. "Ah!" he said. "Then it's quite out of the question?" Ida saw the blood rise into his face, and noticed the sudden hardness in his eyes. Her answer evidently had hurt him more than she expected, and she felt sorry for him. The man's quietness and control and the absence of any dramatic protestation had a favorable effect on her, and she was almost certain that she could have married him had she met him a year earlier. In the meanwhile, however, she had met another man, dressed in old blue duck, with hands hard and scarred; and the well-groomed soldier became of less account as she recalled the man she had left in the mountains. Then Kinnaird turned to her again. "Can't you give me a chance?" he said. "If it's necessary, I'll wait; and in the meanwhile I may do something worth while out yonder, if that's any inducement." "I'm very sorry," replied Ida. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be." She looked him steadily in the eyes, and he had sense enough to recognize that no words of his would move her. Though it was not an easy matter, he retained his self-control. "Well," he admitted, "it hurts, but I must bear it. And I want to say that I'm glad in several ways that I met you." Then the blood crept into his face again. "I should, at least, like you to think kindly of me, and I'm rather afraid appearances are against me. Because that is so, there's a thing that I should like you to understand. I'd have been proud to marry you had you been a beggar." "Thank you," said Ida, who saw that he meant it. "I'm more sorry than ever, but the thing is--out of the question." Kinnaird gravely held out his arm, but she intimated by a little sign that she did not wish to go back with him, and in a moment the curtains swung to behind him, and he had gone. Ida became conscious that she was growing cold; but she sat quite still for at least five minutes, thinking hard, and wondering why she felt so sorry to give up Gregory Kinnaird. It was a somewhat perplexing thing that one could be really fond of an eligible man and yet shrink from marrying him, and there was no doubt whatever that the one she had just sent away had in several respects a good deal to offer her. She admitted that London was, as she expressed it, getting hold of her. She
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