"Have you a mother?"
"The best on earth."
"And yet you would do this to her, just because I have nice eyes."
It was a frigid bucket of water, but Ben stood up under it.
"Yes, I could give her nothing better."
"You don't even know me," said Geraldine. "How strange men are."
"Yes, those you hate; but how about me? You said you liked me."
At this the girl did smile, and the effect was so wonderful that it knocked what little sense Ben Barry had left into oblivion.
"Love at first sight is a fact," he declared. "No one believes it till he's hit, but then there's no questioning. You looked that day as if you would have liked to speak to me—yes"—boldly—"as if to escape Carder you would have mounted that motor-cycle with me and we should have done that Tennyson act, you know—'beyond the earth's remotest rim the happy princess followed him'—or something like that. I don't know it exactly but I'm going to learn it from start to finish and read law afterward. I've dreamed of you all night and worked for you all day ever since and yet I haven't accomplished anything!"
"Haven't!" exclaimed Geraldine. "You've done the most wonderful thing in the world."