te!" He held his arms out
toward her in supplication.

The woman shook her head, but offered no verbal refusal. The man's
arms dropped once more to his sides, and, for a moment, the silence
was only broken by the champing of Peter's bit. Then once more the
man's eyes lit.

"Tell me," he cried, almost fiercely. "Tell me, had we not come into
conflict over this man, Bryant, would--would it--could it have been
different?" Then his voice grew soft and persuasive. "I know you don't
dislike me, Kate." He smiled. "I know it, and you must forgive
my--vanity. I have watched, and studied you, and--convinced myself. I
felt I had the right to hope. The right of every decently honest man.
Our one disagreement has been this man, Bryant. I had thought maybe
you loved him, but that you have denied. You do not? There is no one
else?"

Again Kate silently shook her head. The man was pressing her hard. All
her woman's soul was crying out for her to fling every consideration
to the winds, and yield to the impulse of the love stirring within
her. But something held her back, something so strong as to be quite
irresistible.

The man went on. He was fighting that last forlorn hope amid what, to
him, seemed to be a sea of disaster.

"No. You have told me that before," he said, almost to himself. "Then
why," he went on, his voice rising with the intensity of his feelings.
"Why--why----? But no, it's absurd. You tell me you don't--you can't
love me."

For one brief instant Kate's eyes were shyly raised to his. They
dropped again at once to the brown head of the horse beside her.

"I have told you nothing--yet," she said, in a low voice.

The man snatched a brief hope.

"You mean----?"

Kate looked up again, fearlessly now.

"I mean just what I say."

"You have told me nothing--yet," the man repeated. "Then you have
something--to tell me?"

Kate nodded and pushed Peter's head aside almost roughly.

"The man I can care for, the man I marry must have no thought of hurt
for Charlie Bryant in his mind."

"Then you----"

Kate made a movement of impatience.

"Again, I mean just what I say--no more, no less."

But it was Fyles's turn to become impatient.

"Bryant--Charlie Bryant? It is always Charlie Bryant--before all
things!"

Kate's eyes looked steadily into his.

"Yes--before even myself."

The man returned her look.

"Yet you do not love him as--I would have you love me?"

"Yet I do not love him, as you would have