Sinclair released his arm without gentleness. There was a queer look in the glassy eyes that looked down into the girl’s.
“You’re rattled, kid, plumb rattled!” he cried.
Then of a sudden his whole manner underwent a change. He knew now the full extent of the bill he had to meet, and in one revealing flash he had discovered the means whereby he could settle it.
“It’s not as easy as it sounds, little kid,” he said, as he again took possession of the only too willing hands. “Oh, I can marry you all right. I’ll be crazy glad to. But—but you’ve got to help me.”
The girl’s eyes reflected the effect of his ready assent. They were shining with a great light. She was thrilled.
A time-worn phrase flashed through her mind.
“You’ll marry me, sure!”
Not once but many, many times she had been forced to listen to it. It was the Wolf’s unfailing retort to her fiercest challenge.
Her sense of triumph now became supreme. It was triumph in her everlasting battle with the Wolf. Married to Sinclair, her baby born in wedlock, she felt that at long last she was to wrest the victory her fiercest impishness had failed so far to yield her. Help? Help? It was her lover’s without the asking.
“Tell me?” she cried eagerly in the uplift of the moment.