"Perhaps that doesn't sound quite right. I don't mean that you tried to. But I mean that every time you clouted me I loved you some more.
"Wait—please wait! We'll cut out the trip to Ogdensburg. I see you're not ready for that—yet.
"Yes; I said, 'yet.' I'm filing a claim. Some day I'm going to take it up, perhaps after we've known each other a conventional time.
"I'll admit it may not seem very promising now. But the gold's there, Rosalind. I know it. You may have hidden it from a lot of other people, but you can't hide it from me."
Rosalind's nineteenth—or was it the eighteenth, or twentieth?—proposal bewildered her.
"So remember! It stands this way: I love you, and some day I'm going to marry you. I'll wait—but I won't quit."
He paused and watched her for some sign, but she was mute, motionless. Suddenly his voice changed.
"Oh, if you'd only let yourself go, Rosalind! If you'd only throw off the mask! You nearly did, back in the launch, when it was all touch and go for a few minutes.
"I don't love you because you're brave or capable or wonderful. That's only part of you—the part everybody sees. But there's a lot more than that. You've tried to bury it out of sight in your woman's heart, but it won't stay there always. It's the real you—and I'm going to have it!"
There was a moment of silence. Then Kellogg spoke with his old briskness.