"It's just a question of people, then?"
"I s'pose so."
"Will you let me put my arm around you to-night in the Little Nugget?"
"Of course not."
"But there's people there," triumphantly. "Now what's the harm? It's different with us. Of course you ought not to let anyone else, but we're different."
They were sitting near together, and all this time the Westerner's arm was moving inch by inch along the rock behind Molly. As he talked he clasped her waist, gingerly, in order not to alarm. She shivered as she became conscious of the touch, and for one instant gave herself up. Then she sternly ordered Cheyenne Harry to take his distance. The latter tried to temporize by opening an argument. The half-playful struggle always ended in Molly's gaining her point, but the victory was laughing, and so Cheyenne Harry was encouraged to reopen the attack on new grounds.
As one of the inevitable results, the emotion which Molly experienced in at once denying herself and combating Harry was gradually translated into a fascinated sort of passion for him. Then, too, since naturally the interest of these indecisive encounters increased with each, the two came to see each other oftener and oftener, until the habit of companionship was well established. This habit is very real. The approach of the accustomed hour for meeting causes the heart to beat faster, the breath to come quicker, the imagination to kindle; while the foregoing of a single appointment is a dull loss difficult to bear with patience. It counterfeits well many of the symptoms of love, and for a short time is nearly as burning a passion.
Sometimes the attack would be more direct. Cheyenne Harry's stock of sophistry would give out, as well as his stock of patience.
"Oh, come on, Molly," he would cry, "just one! I've been real good, now haven't I? Oh, come on!"
"You've been nothing but a great big brute, Mr. Cheyenne Harry!" she cried in a tone that implied he had not.