ve,
transcendently vital.

"Then oh--won't you please--please--turn round--and go home--and leave
me alone?" she pleaded astonishingly.

"Turn round and go home?" stammered Barton.

The touch on his sleeve quickened a little. "Oh, yes--please, Mr.
Barton!" insisted the tremulous voice.

"You--you mean I'm in your way?" stammered Barton.

Very gravely the girl nodded her head. "Oh, yes, Mr. Barton--you're
terribly in my way," she acknowledged quite frankly.

"Good Heavens," thought Barton, "is there a man in this? Is it a
tryst? Well, of all things!"

Jerkily he began to back his horse out of the spring-hole,
back--back--back through the intricate, overgrown pathway of flapping
leaves and sharp, scratchy twigs.

"I am very sorry, Miss Edgarton, to have forced my presence on you
so!" he murmured ironically.

"Oh, it isn't just you!" said little Eve Edgarton quite frankly. "It's
all Father's friends." Almost threateningly as she spoke she jerked up
her own horse's drizzling mouth and rode right at Barton as if to
force him back even faster through the great snarl of underbrush. "I
hate clever people!" she asserted passionately. "I hate them--hate
them--hate them! I hate all Father's clever friends! I hate--"

"But you see I'm not clever," grinned Barton in spite of himself. "Oh,
not clever at all," he reiterated with some grimness as an alder
branch slapped him stingingly across one eye. "Indeed--" he dodged and
ducked and floundered, still backing, backing, everlastingly
backing--"indeed, your father has spent quite a lot of his valuable
time this afternoon assuring me--and reassuring me--that--that I'm
altogether a fool!"

Unrelentingly little Eve Edgarton's horse kept right on forcing him
back--back--back.

"But if you're not one of Father's clever friends--who are you?" she
demanded perplexedly. "And why did you insist so on riding with me
this afternoon?" she cried accusingly.

"I didn't exactly--insist," grinned Barton with a flush of guilt. The
flush of guilt added to the flush of heat made him look suddenly very
confused.

Across Eve Edgarton's thin little face the flash of temper faded
instantly into mere sulky ennui again.

"Oh, dear--oh, dear," she droned. "You--you didn't want to marry me,
did you?"

Just for one mad, panic-stricken second the whole world seemed to turn
black before Barton's eyes. His heart stopped beating. His ear-drums
cracked. Then suddenly, astonishingly, he found him