“It is such a small distinction,” he said bitterly. “Antagonists. How can I ever hope that you can care for me? Kate, Kate,” he burst out passionately, “if you would marry me, none of the rest would matter. I love you so, dear. If you would marry me I should not care what the answer from headquarters might be. Why should I? I should then have all I cared for in the world, and the world itself would still be before us. I have money saved. All we should need to start us. My God, the very thought of it fills me with the lust of conquest. There would be nothing too great to aspire to. Kate, Kate!” He held his arms out toward her in supplication.
The woman shook her head, but offered no verbal refusal. The man’s arms dropped once more to his sides, and, for a moment, the silence was only broken by the champing of Peter’s bit. Then once more the man’s eyes lit.
“Tell me,” he cried, almost fiercely. “Tell me, had we not come into conflict over this man, Bryant, would—would it—could it have been different?” Then his voice grew soft and persuasive. “I know you don’t dislike me, Kate.” He smiled. “I know it, and you must forgive my—vanity. I have watched, and studied you, and—convinced myself. I felt I had the right to hope. The right of every decently honest man. Our one disagreement has been this man, Bryant. I had thought maybe you loved him, but that you have denied. You do not? There is no one else?”
Again Kate silently shook her head. The man was pressing her hard. All her woman’s soul was crying out for her to fling every consideration to the winds, and yield to the impulse of the love stirring within her. But something held her back, something so strong as to be quite irresistible.
The man went on. He was fighting that last forlorn hope amid what, to him, seemed to be a sea of disaster.
“No. You have told me that before,” he said, almost to himself. “Then why,” he went on, his voice rising with the intensity of his feelings. “Why—why——? But no, it’s absurd. You tell me you don’t—you can’t love me.”
For one brief instant Kate’s eyes were shyly raised to his. They dropped again at once to the brown head of the horse beside her.
“I have told you nothing—yet,” she said, in a low voice.
The man snatched a brief hope.
“You mean——?”