Then, for the first time, he spoke; and he spoke with unpunctuated rapidity, in a hard, mechanical tone, as though he were a bad model of Edison's latest triumph, and some tyro hand was grinding at the cylinder. "Miss Rose," he began, "we are old friends--never so old; but I can never sufficiently regret--last night!" He felt, rather than saw, the muff come sharply down and the face turn full to him; regardless now of the biting wind. "No! don't interrupt me," he went on, straight at the off-horse's right ear. "I _know_ your goodness of heart; _know_ how it pained you; but you could have done nothing else but--_refuse me!_" Miss Rose Wood's mouth opened quickly; but a providential gutter jolted her nearly from the seat; and the wind drove her first word back into her throat like a sob. The inexorable machine beside her ground on relentless. "Yes, I understand what you would say: that you refused me _firmly_ and _finally_ because I--_deserved it!_" Had Andy Browne's soul really been the tin-foil of the phonograph, it could not have shown more utter disregard of moral responsibility. "You knew I was under the influence of wine; that I would never have dared to address you had I been myself! I repeat, I deserve my--_decisive rejection!_ It was proper and just in you to say '_No!_'" Woman's will conquered for one brief second. Spite of wind and spite of him, Miss Wood began: "'_No?_' I--" "Yes, '_no!_'" broke in the relentless machinery. It ground on implacable, though great beads stood on Andy's brow from sheer terror lest he run down before the end. "_No!_ as firmly, as emphatically as you said it to me last night. Indeed, I honor you the more for flatly refusing the man who, in forgetting his self-respect, forgot his respect--_for you!_ But, Miss Rose, while I pledge you my honor never, _never_ to speak to you again _of love_, I may still be--_your friend!_" The bays were bowling down the street again by this time; when another _kismet_, in small and ugly canine form, flew at their heads with yelp and snarl. Rearing with one impulse, the spirited pair lunged forward and flew past the now twinkling lamps in a wild gallop. Andy pulled them down at last; their swinging trot replacing the dangerous rush. The Wood mansion was almost in sight; but the Ancient Mariner was a tyro to Andy Browne in the way he fixed that off-horse's right ear with stony stare. He might have looked round in perfect safety. The lithe figure by him sat gracefully erect. The face a trifle pale; the lips set tight against each other, with the blood pressed out of them, were not unnatural in that cutting wind. The eyes, fixed straight ahead, as his own, gleamed gray and cold; only a half-closing of the lids, once or twice, hiding an ugly light reflecting through them from the busy brain behind. But Andy never turned once until he brought up the bays stock still and leaped down to offer his hand to the lady at her own door.