"I told you that I would come, Patricia, and I am here," said Morton, stepping forward quickly, and taking one of her hands, before she could resume her seat. She attempted to withdraw it, but he held it firmly in his own strong clasp; and that expression of unrelenting determination was again in his face and eyes.
"No, Patricia," he said calmly, but in a tone of finality which there was no denying, "I will not release your hand, just yet." He was half-smiling, but wholly insistent and determined. "You see," he went on, "I am taking advantage of your known qualities of courage. I have come to you, determined to say something—something that is very close to me." Patricia's arm relaxed; she permitted her hand to lie limply inside his larger one. Then, she raised her eyes to his, and looked calmly up at him.
As he gazed steadily and keenly into her dark eyes, Morton's face was pale, under the tan of his skin, and he had the look of one who ventures his all upon a single chance. In that moment, Patricia admired him more than she had ever before, and, as he continued to gaze upon her, she permitted her features slowly to relax, and, gradually, a winning smile, which to Richard Morton was overwhelming, was revealed upon her lips and in her eyes.
"You have no right to speak to me like that, Mr. Morton," she said. "Still less have you the right to hold my hand, against my will. The men of my acquaintance, with whom I have associated all my life, would not do as you are doing now; but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"I suppose it is a matter of training."
The words were like a blow, although she smiled while she uttered them. With a sharp exclamation that came very near to being an oath, he threw her hand from him with such force that she was half-turned around where she stood, and he started back two paces away from her, and folded his arms.
"Thank you," said Patricia, still smiling; and she crossed to the chair she had previously occupied.
Morton did not move from the position he had assumed. He stood with folded arms in the middle of the room, staring at her with set face and hard eyes, wondering for the moment why he had been fool enough to go there at all, and trying to read in her face, what was the charm of her that so fatally attracted him.
"I do a great many things, Miss Langdon, that I have no right to do," he said, after a pause. "That, also, is a matter of training, as you so fittingly adjudged my conduct, just now. But I was trained in the open country, where one can see the sky-line toward any point of the compass; I was trained in the West, where a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and they are judged only by their conduct toward others, and toward themselves. It is true that I know very little about this Eastern training, to which you have just now called my attention, but from what little I have seen of it, I can't believe that it is wholesome, or good. I was trained to tell the truth, and to insist that the truth be told to me; I find here, in the East, that the truth is the very last thing to be uttered; that it is avoided as long as it possibly can be. In this way, Miss Langdon, our trainings differ. Naturally, then, I am not like the men of your knowledge."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Morton, I didn't mean to give offense by what I said." The girl was more amazed than she cared to show by his vehemence.
"The fault is mine," he said to her. "I have no right to expect you to meet me on the plane of my own past life, and with the freedom and candor of the West, any more than you can demand from me, the usages and customs of your social world in New York."