"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No." She smiled woefully. "Not of you, but of myself."
"You haven't taken my dare," he urged under this encouragement.
"Please, please," she begged. "We can never marry, so don't let us discuss it."
"Then I copper your bet to lose." He was almost gay, now, for success was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked him, without a doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well enough to let him hold her hand, well enough to be not repelled by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. "No, it is impossible. You would lose your bet."
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight's mind—a clew that explained everything.
"Say, you ain't been let in for some one of these secret marriages have you?"
The consternation in his voice and on his face was too much for her, and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of joy from the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed with himself decided that action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of flying leaves enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to him and of a fresher and more poignant realization of what she meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware of it in the hand that held hers.