"HE GLANCED AT IT."
"For you more than for all the world beside."
"More than for——?" He cast a frowning glance at the photograph.
"Immeasurably more," she answered steadily, and the unconquerable truth in her forced her to add the word, "to-day!"
"To-day?" he echoed, with mingled anger and reluctant admiration. "Barbara, you are too honest to deny——" He paused with a quick indrawing of the breath and setting of the teeth.
"To deny the past?" her soft voice interposed as he paused. "Yes! I could never deny it! You know, Rick, you always knew, that I could not give you my yesterdays!"
"Barbara, I am jealous of those yesterdays," he said, after a silence.
"Why begrudge the yesterdays," she pleaded, "when all the to-morrows are yours?"
His dark eyes kindled with a deep and tender glow.
"All? All? None to share with me, or rob me? All mine?" He framed her delicate fair face between his big brown hands, and held it thus gently upturned to his as he gazed intently into it. "Barbara," he added, "do you know it would be a bad thing for any man who came between me and you?"