"Yet ten years isn't really such a long time, is it, Becky? I was only a little boy, but I told myself then that I would never kiss any other girl. I thought then that—that some day I might ask you to marry me. I—I had a wild dream that I might try to make you love me. I didn't know then that poverty is a millstone about a man's neck." He gave a bitter laugh.
Becky's breath came quickly. "Oh, Randy," she said, "poverty wouldn't have had anything to do with it—not if we had—cared——"
"I care," said Randy, "and I think the first time I knew how much I cared was when I kissed that other girl. Somehow you came to me that night, a little white thing, so fine and different, and I loathed her."
He was standing now—tall and lean and black-haired, but with the look of race on his thin face, a rather princely chap in spite of his shabby clothes. "Of course you don't care," he said; "I think if I had money I should try to make you. But I haven't the right. I had thought that, perhaps, if no other man came that some time I might——"
Becky picked up her riding crop, and as she talked she tapped her boot in a sort of staccato accompaniment.
"That other man has come," tap-tap, "he kissed me," tap-tap, "and made me love him," tap-tap, "and he has gone away—and he hasn't asked me to marry him."
One saw the Indian in Randy now, in the lifted head, the square-set jaw, the almost cruel keenness of the eyes.
"Of course it is George Dalton," he said.
"Yes."