They stood eye to eye while the girl swiftly read the sheer honesty lying behind the man’s eyes. Then she shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I’m going to sell. I’m going to sell, and I’ll just wait around after, hoping for the day to come when the Aurora Clan will reckon that Bad Booker’s a sort of nightmare disease an’ needs plenty good med’cine. Thanks, Ivor. It’s just a real kind thought of yours, and the thing that makes me glad is I know you mean it just as you’ve said it. But I don’t want your money. I—I wouldn’t take it if it was that or—or starve.”
For all there was something of roughness in the girl’s choice of words for her refusal, there was none in her manner. Even her hope that one day Booker would receive his medicine at the hands of the secret Aurora Clan was without undue feeling. The man was deeply stirred.
They were great friends, these two. But for the man’s peace of mind the frank nature of their friendship was deplorable. He loved the girl with all the strength of his manhood. He held a big position with the Mountain Oil Corporation of Ohio as their consulting engineer, and his whole desire was to take this child of the northern wilderness away to his far-off home in the sunlit valleys of California. She had refused to marry him more than once. But somehow her refusal had left their friendship unaffected. She liked him whole-heartedly in a manner that to her precluded all possibility of regard of a deeper nature, but which in the man only contrived to strengthen his natural persistence.
The leaping fires of the man’s passion surged up in face of the rebuff. For a brief moment he contemplated the smiling eyes in their wonderful framing of vivid hair, which the slouch-brimmed hat she was wearing failed to conceal. Then his lips obeyed his impulse.
“Yes, I know, Claire,” he said, his voice harshened by emotion. “You won’t, you can’t accept my help. Why? I’ll tell you. Because I don’t belong to you. Because I want to marry you, am crazy with love for you, and you don’t feel like falling for my notion. So you can’t have the thing I want to do for you like I never wanted to do for anybody ever before. I guess you’re right enough in your own lights, sure you are. You’re not putting yourself under obligation to the feller you don’t fancy to marry. But why not marry me, Claire? Maybe I’m not a thing of beauty. But I guess I just love you to death. Maybe you don’t care a thing for the picture I make now, but you’ll get used to it. Sure you will.” He laughed a little bitterly. “I guess folks can get used to most things after a while.” Then his smile passed. “But, my dear, ther’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t do to give you a real dandy life. These oil wells out here are going to pass me a fortune that I’m crazy to share with you. Won’t you? No. You won’t. I can see it in your eyes, the same as I’ve seen it before. But—but if I’ve still got to stand for that, there’s things I won’t stand for. You need help and I’ll raise all the hell I can to pass it you.”
Claire shook her head a shade impatiently.
“It’s no use, Ivor. Why—why can’t we be friends? True, I haven’t a thing against you in the world, not a thing, not even”—she smiled gently—“the looks which you don’t seem to set much stock by. No, it isn’t anything like that. True it isn’t. I like you, but—— Here, you don’t get the things lying back of my fool head. Guess I’m my father’s daughter. You knew him for what he was. He was a gambler. And maybe, in a way, I’m a gambler, too. I want life with all its chances. I want to reach out an’ hug it all. I want to take every chance coming, and do something, and be something in the game of it all. I don’t want to marry. Sure not yet. I don’t want to share in any man’s home, and—and grow on like a cabbage. There’s too much of the big adventure in life for me to miss it all. Maybe I’ll get sort of disillusioned later—maybe. I can’t help that. But I mean to take a hand in the game meanwhile.”
There was such a ring of final resolution in the girl’s smiling denial that the man realised his momentary defeat. So he offered no further protest. He made no attempt at argument. He shrugged his great shoulders, and the happy twinkle returned to his eyes.
“Don’t say another word, Claire,” he said gently. “Maybe I understand the thing lying back of your mind. Forget my break. It was a bad one, and I shouldn’t have made it, but—but I sort of just had to. I won’t do it again. There isn’t some other feller, is there?”