"I'm in a wild mood—a mood that fits in with the rain and wind, Mary. I'm in such a mood that if the times were different and the age more romantic, I would pick you up and put you on my champing steed and carry you off to my castle."
He laughed, and for the moment she was thrilled by his masterfulness. "But, alas, my steed is a taxi—the age is prosaic—and you—I'm afraid of you, Contrary Mary."
They were on the Speedway now, faintly illumined, showing a row of waving willow trees, spectrally outlined against a background of gray water.
"I'm afraid of you. I have always been. Even when you were only ten and I was fifteen. I would shake in my shoes when you looked at me, Mary; you were the only one then—you are the only one—now."
Her hand lay on the outside of the rug. He put his own over it.
"Ever since you said to-night that you didn't care—there's been something singing—in my brain, and it has said, 'make her care, make her care.' And I'm going to do it. I'm not going to trouble you or worry you with it—and I'm going to take my chances with the rest. But in the end I'm going to—win."
"There aren't any others."
"If there aren't there will be. You've kept yourself protected so far by that little independent manner of yours, which scares men off. But some day a man will come who won't be scared—and then it will be a fight to the finish between him—and me."
"Oh, Porter, I don't want to think of marrying—not for ten million years."
"And yet," he said prophetically, "if to-morrow you should meet some man who could make you think he was the Only One, you'd marry him in the face of all the world."