She rose and faced him, reaching up to lay her hands on his thick shoulders.
"Will you give me your promise as an honest man to try to avoid a fight with him?"
For she saw death in it if they met alone; certainly death for one, and perhaps for both.
"Kate, would you ask a tree to promise to avoid the lightning?"
She caught a little breath through set teeth in her angry impatience, then: "Dan, you're like a naughty boy. Can't you be reasonable?"
Despite her wrath, she noticed a quick change in his face. The blue of his eyes was no longer cold and incurious, but lighted, warm, and marvelously deep.
And she said rapidly, making her voice cold to quell the uneasy, rising fire behind his eyes: "If you have made McTee angry, aren't you man enough to smooth things over—to ask his pardon?"
He answered vaguely: "Beg his pardon?"
"Why is that so impossible? For my sake, Dan!"
The light went out of his face as if a candle had been snuffed.