"I invited you to come up here. I shall see you to the door of that tavern. You may never speak to me again, but you won't be able to say about me that I deserted you in the dark night." "Will you come back here after you have escorted me to the tavern?" "No! It's settled into a stand-off between Flagg and me." "Don't you want to please me?" "Yes, even to lying down here in the mud and letting you walk on me," he declared, his fervor breaking from the repression he had been maintaining with difficulty. "And it's because he has insulted somebody that I feel like that toward--that's why I'm done with him. I'm not putting it very smoothly. But it's in here!" He pounded his fist on his breast. "Mr. Latisan, this is folly. I'm only a waitress." "I'm thanking God that you are and that you aren't too high above me, as I was afraid you were when I met you in New York. You're down where I can talk to you." She started to walk away, but he leaped and seized both her arms. "This is going mighty fast," he gasped. "I never talked to a girl in this way in all my life. I'll probably never dare to talk to you if I wait for daylight to-morrow--I'll be too scared of my thoughts overnight." She did not try to twist herself free from his grasp; she was more self-possessed than he was--he was trembling in all his frame. "It's like dynamite," he stammered. "I reckon it was in me all the time! The first flash of your eyes lighted the fuse! I've blown up." He pulled her close to him, flung his arms about her, and kissed her. But immediately he loosed her and stepped back. "I didn't intend to do that! My feelings got away from me." "And now may I go along?" she inquired, coldly, after he had remained silent for a time. "I'm sorry I have made you angry. I don't know how to go at a thing like this one I'm tackling," he said contritely. "But I feel that talking out straight and man fashion is the only way. Will you marry me?" "Certainly not, sir!" He did not attempt to stay her when she walked on. He trod humbly by her side. "I was afraid you wouldn't. But I couldn't keep back the asking any more than I can push back that flood you can hear down in the gorge. It just had to pour along, that asking!" "Mr. Latisan, you astonish me. You desert your employer on account of a mere whim----" "Don't you call my standing up for you any whim, if you please!" The change in his tone from humility to stern and masterful command caused her to catch her breath. She was not accustomed to dominance by men. "At any rate, sir, you have proposed marriage to a stranger, a mere come-by-chance into this place, not knowing who or what I am. I have a right to be astonished." "Probably! But you aren't any more so than I was in New York when I realized what had happened to me." "So, now you can forget all about me and go back to your work on the drive!"