"Listen to me," I interrupted firmly. "I have not asked you for anything; I have not asked your permission; I am not a friend of yours and I shall never be that. I don't want to be your friend. I love you, and I am going to win your love. Now you can go. Come on." We walked on and I saw her safely home. We talked about everything and I told her much of myself. But she was plainly thinking not about what I was saying then, but what I had said on the dusty steps. When we reached her home, I saved her embarrassment. I held out my hand and said, "Good-by, I love you." No woman can quite let a man go, at least, no woman with a woman's coquetry can. After I had turned away, what must Eleanor Leigh do but say demurely, "I hope you will win your case." I turned back, of course. "I will," I said, "in both courts." Then I strode away. I went home feeling somewhat as a man might who, after shipwreck, had reached an unknown shore. I was in a new land and knew not where I stood or how; or whether the issue would be life or death. I only knew that I had passed a crisis in my life and whatever came I must meet it. I was strangely happy, yet I had had no word of encouragement. To have declared one's love has this in it, that henceforth the one you love can never be wholly indifferent to you. I went home feeling that I had acquired a new relation to Eleanor Leigh and that somehow I had a right to her whether she consented or not. My love for her, as ardent as it had been before, had suddenly deepened. It had, in a way, also become purer. I went over and over and dwelt on every word she had ever uttered to me, every gentle look I had ever seen her give, every tender expression that had illumined her face or softened her eyes, and I found myself thinking of her character as I had never done before. I planned how I should meet her next and tried to fancy how she would look and what she would say. I wondered vaguely what she would think of me when she reached her room and thought over what I had said. But I soon left this realm of vague conjecture for the clearly defined elysium of my own love. Had I known what I learned only a long time afterward--how she acted and what she thought of on reaching home, I might have been somewhat consoled though still mystified. XXVI COLL McSHEEN'S METHODS It is astonishing what a motive power love is. With Eleanor Leigh in my heart, I went to work on my Tipps case with fury.