You're angry with that woman, not with me."

She snatched her hand away.

"You shan't!" she said. "Don't you dare to touch me again. I hate
you--hate you for what you have done! You've been a brute probably to
her as well as to me!"

"To you? When?" he demanded

"All the time! To-day!--Now!--when you say I'm angry at a--woman who
is dead!--a woman who died for you!"

It hit him.

"Poor Queenie," he said, "poor child."

"Yes--poor Queenie!" Her eyes blazed in the moonlight. "To think that
you dared to treat me like----"

"Beth!" he interrupted, "I won't permit it. I told you to-day I loved
you. That makes things right. You love me, and that makes them
sacred. I'd do all I've done over again--_all_ of it--Queenie and the
rest! I'm not ashamed, nor sorry for anything I've done. I love
you--I say--I love you. That's what I've never done before--and never
said I did--and that's what makes things right!"

Beth was confused by what he said--confused in her judgment, her
emotions. Weakly she clung to her argument.

"You haven't any right--it isn't true when you say I love you. I
don't! I won't! You can't deny that woman died of a broken heart for
you!"

"I don't deny anything about her," he said. "I tried to be her friend.
God knows she needed friends. She was only a child, a pretty child.
I'm sorry. I've always been sorry. She knew I was only a friend."

She felt he was honest. She knew he was wrung--suffering, but not in
his conscience. Yet what was she to think? She had heard it all--all
of Queenie's story.

"You kissed her," she said, and red flamed up in her cheeks.

"It was all she asked," he answered simply. "She was dying."

"And you're paying for her funeral."

"I said I was her friend."

"Oh, the shamelessness of it!" she exclaimed as before, "--the way it
looks! And to think of what you dared to do to me!"

"Yes, I kissed you without your asking," he confessed. "I expect to
kiss you a hundred thousand times. I expect to make you my wife--for a
love like ours is rare. Whatever else you think you want to say,
Beth--now--don't say it--unless it's just good-night."

With a sudden move forward he took her two shoulders in his powerful
hands and gave her a rough little shake. Then his palms went swiftly
to her face, he kissed her on the lips, and let her go.

"You!--Oh!" she cried, and turning she ran down the slope of the hill
as hard as she could travel.

He watc