d quality in his answer. "I had to
protect you somehow. He had seen us together at Ritzen. I said
you were my wife."

Sylvia gasped in speechless astonishment.

He went on ruthlessly. "It was the only thing to do. They're not
a particularly moral crowd here, and, as you say, they wouldn't
understand anything else--decent. Do you object to the idea? Do
you object very strongly?"

There was something masterful in the persistence with which he
pressed the question. Sylvia had a feeling as of being held down
and compelled to drink some strangely paralyzing draught.

She made a slight, half-scared movement and in a moment his hand
released hers.

"You do object!" he said.

She clasped her hands tightly together. "Please don't say--or
think--that! It is such a sudden idea, and--it's rather a wild
one, isn't it?" Her breath came quickly. "If--if I agreed--and
let the pretence go on--people would be sure to find out sooner or
later. Wouldn't they?"

"I am not suggesting any pretence," he said.

"What do you mean then?" Sylvia said, compelling herself to speak
steadily.

"I am asking you to marry me," he said, with equal steadiness.

"Really, do you mean? You are actually in earnest?" Her voice had
a sharp quiver in it. She was trembling suddenly. "Please be
quite plain with me!" she said. "Remember, I don't know you very
well. I have got to get used to the ways out here."

"I am quite in earnest," said Burke. "You know me better than you
knew the man you came out here to marry. And you will get used to
things more quickly married to me than any other way. At least you
will have an assured position. That ought to count with you."

"Of course it would! It does!" she said rather incoherently.
"But--you see--I've no one to help me--no one to advise me. I'm on
a road I don't know. And I'm so afraid of taking a wrong turning."

"Afraid!" he said. "You!"

She tried to laugh. "You think me a very bold person, don't you?
Or you wouldn't have suggested such a thing."

"I think you've got plenty of grit," he said, "but that wasn't what
made me suggest it." He paused a moment. "Perhaps it's hardly
worth while going on," he said then. "I seem to have gone too far
already. Please believe I meant well, that's all!"

"Oh, I know that!" she said.

And then, moved by a curious impulse, she did an extraordinary
thing. She leaned forward and laid her clasped hands on his knee.

"I'm going to