"I'm sorry you said that," she told him quietly. "It's quite impossible. I can tell you now what I couldn't tell you before. People say that I have promised to marry you in exchange for your promise that we shall have water for the ranch."
"If you'll tell me the name of a man who utters an infernal lie like that I'll wring his neck," he growled.
"I believe you would. But what good would it do? You can't fight rumours and gossip in that way. That's the trouble with you—you depend on force alone. Can't you see the position this puts us in—puts me in? You can't come here any more."
"I don't see that at all," he objected. "I'll blow up your dam myself if you think it will help, but as for not seeing you—why, it's out of the question. I've got to see you. I'm going to see you. I can't help it. 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."