Then she turned to him.
“Alan has told me of some of your talks to him about love, and—”
“Oh, he has!” Miller laughed out uneasily. “But surely you wouldn't hold anything against me that I said before I met you in Atlanta and fell heels over head in love with you. Besides, I was simply stretching my imagination to save him from making a serious mistake. But I know what it is to care for a girl now, and I have wanted to tell him so, but simply could not face him with my confession—when—when his own sister was in question.”
“I have tried to believe,” Adele hesitated, “that you had changed in your ideas of love since—since we learned to know each other, and I confess I succeeded to some extent, but there was one thing that simply sticks and refuses to be eradicated. It sticks more right now than ever. I mean this morning, since—”
“Now you do surprise me,” declared Miller. “Please explain. Don't you see I'm simply dying with impatience?”
“You pressed the point in one of those talks with brother,” said Adele, quite firmly, “that it was impossible for two people of unequal fortune to be happy together, and—”
“Now you wouldn't surely hurl that rubbish at me,” broke in Miller. “I never would have dreamed of saying such a thing if I had not thought Alan was about to butt his head against a stone wall in the hostility of Colonel Barclay. If he had been fairly well off and she had been without money I'd have said sail in and take her, but I knew what a mercenary old man Barclay is, and I thought I could save the boy from a good many heartaches.”
“That—even as you now put it—would be hard for a girl in my position to forget,” Adele told him. “For if this enterprise fails to-day, I shall—just think of it!—I shall not only be penniless, but my father will owe you a large amount of money that he never will be able to pay. Oh, I could not bear to go to you under such circumstances! I have always wanted my independence, and this grates on my very soul.”
Their eyes met in a long, steady stare. “Oh, you must—you really must not see it that way,” floundered the young man. “You will make me very miserable. I can' t live without you, Adele. Besides, I shall not lose by the loan I made to your father. The land will bring the money back sooner or later, and what will it matter? You will be my wife and your parents will be my parents. Already I love them as my own. Oh, darling, don't turn me down this way! Really I can' t help the turn matters have taken, and if you care for me you ought not to wreck our happiness for a silly whim like this.”
She sat unmoved for a moment, avoiding the fervid glow of his passion-filled eyes.