I tell you I think of you all the time. Why, hang it, Sheila, I
think of you when I ought to be thinking of my work."

She would have laughed if she had not seen that he was in deadly
earnest. His work was a fetish, all-absorbing, demanding and receiving
the tribute of his entire attention and energy. That thought of a woman
should come between him and it was proof positive of devotion
extraordinary.

"You must not do that," she said, gently.

"But I can't help it," he reiterated. "It's new to me, this. I can't
concentrate on my work. I keep thinking of you. If that isn't being in
love, what in thunder is? I'm talking to you as straight as I'd talk to
a man. I believe I love you as much as any woman was ever loved. You
don't know much about me, but I'm considered a good man in my
profession. From a material point of view I'm all right."

"If I cared for you that would be the last thing I'd think of."

"Why can't you care for me?" he demanded. "I don't expect much. We'd
get along."

"No," she said decidedly. "No. It's impossible. We're comparatively
strangers. I think you're going to be a big man some day. I rather
admire you in some ways. But that is all."

"Well, anyway, I'm not going to quit," he announced doggedly. "I never
gave up anything yet. You talk as if it didn't matter! Maybe it doesn't
to you, but it does to me. You don't know how much I care. I can't tell
you, either. This talk isn't my line. Look here, though. About ten
years ago, down in the desert of the Southwest, my horse broke his leg,
and I was set afoot. I nearly died of thirst before I got out. All
those blistering days, while I stumbled along in that baking hell, I
kept thinking of a cool spring we had on our place when I was a boy. It
bubbled up in moss at the foot of a big cedar, and I used to lie flat
and drink till I couldn't hold any more. It was the sweetest water in
the world. All those days I tortured myself by thinking of it. I'd have
given my soul, if I have one, to satisfy my thirst at that spring. And
that's how I feel about you. I want your love as I wanted that water."

"I'm very sorry," she said. "It's out of the question."

"But why?" he demanded. "Give me a chance. I'm not a monster. Or do you
mean that you care for somebody else? Is that it? Do you care anything
for that Dunne? A fellow that's in love with another woman!"

Even in the dying light he could see the dark flush that surged over
cheek and brow. She rose to