"Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.
"Again and again until you see reason."
She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.
"There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look. "I don't think—that I—care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at my—fickleness. But I don't—not with the full of my heart."
His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed. "Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."
Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naïve candor. "I think there will be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."
"I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as a guidepost to what I mean to do."
"I know," the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race. "I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You have given work to thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made."
"Then I'll make a new code for you," he said, smiling. "Just do as I say and everything will come out right."