so they are.
Och anee!

"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me,
An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea,
'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far:
His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are.
Och anee!"

Her hands dropped from the keys and she turned slowly on the end of the
seat. The dark lashes fell to her hot cheeks. He did not speak, but she
felt the steady insistence of his gaze. In self-defense she looked at
him.

The pallor of his face lent accent to the fire that smouldered in his
eyes.

"I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Make up your mind to that, girl," he
said harshly.

There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. "'There's caulder
things than salt waves between us, so they are,'" she quoted.

"Not if I love you and you love me. By God, I trample down everything
that comes between us."

He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray
eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A
lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he
dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young,
lissom body held her own.

"Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.

"Again and again until you see reason."

She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in
her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.

"There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes
lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look.
"I don't think--that I--care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at
my--fickleness. But I don't--not with the full of my heart."

His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed.
"Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let
yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the
little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."

Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naive candor. "I think there will
be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."

"I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help
hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up
by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my
plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight
of the vision. No need for me to bra