"Oh!" she retorted, "you are a most tantalizing person. Why cannot you tell me? If the matter is secret you have no cause to be afraid. To whom could I whisper it in this wilderness?"
She waved a hand half-round the compass as she spoke, and stood there looking at him, still with the look of expectancy in her eyes, and with a little dash of colour in her bronzed cheeks.
"I am not afraid of your whispering it to any one," replied Stane, with a poor attempt at laughter.
"Then why not tell me?" she urged.
"Because——" began the man, and then stopped. The temptation surged up anew within him, the stress of it almost broke down his resolution. Then he cried, almost violently, "No! I cannot tell you—now."
"Now!" she said, in tremulous laughter. "Now! 'Behold now is the accepted time and now is the day of salvation.' Unless the religious education of your youth was sadly neglected you ought to know that. The present is the only time. But if you will not tell me this tantalizing secret now, you will some time?"
"Some time!" he answered.
"It is a promise," she insisted and now there was no laughing note in her voice, and her face was very serious.
"Yes," he answered, "it is a promise."
"Then I write it on the tablets of my mind. I shall hold you to it, and some day I shall demand its fulfilment."