"I wanted to see you first."
"That was very kind."
"To tell you why I was going at all—to tell you everything, Nan, if you will let me—if you aren't determined to misunderstand me before I open my mouth!"
Their eyes were together now, his dark with passion, in hers a certain softening of the unlovely light that hurt him more than her tone: and her eyes were the first to fall, to wander, to espy a stump among the pines.
"I must sit down," she faltered. "It's my first appearance, and I tire directly. But I'm not too tired to listen to you—I want to."
Yet already a change had come over her, and either she was physically weaker or else softer at heart than she had been but a minute before. At all events she took his arm to the stump, which was one of several in a little clearing lit and checkered by the slanting sun. And she sat there almost meekly in his sight, while Denis planted a foot upon one of the other stumps and said what he had to say with bare arms folded across a moleskinned knee.
"In the first place," he began, "I saved your life."
Nan's smouldering spirit was in flames upon the word, and her face caught its fire.
"And you remind me of it!" she cried in red scorn. "Is it the sort of thing one forgets? Is it a thing to thank you for like any common service, and are you the one to put the words in my mouth?"
Denis did not wince.