With a laugh he caught her hand and made her walk down the hospital steps. "You may be as mean as you like," he answered indifferently. "Only, never ask me to be mean to you." "I wish to heaven you would be," she retorted. "Do you remember," he asked, "what we were doing a year ago to-day?" "No." Before he could speak again she changed her answer: "Yes, I do remember. If I said 'no' you'd be sure to remind me of what we were doing. We can't see as well here as we could from the steps." "But from here, you have the best view in Sleepy Cat of Music Mountain." "We didn't come out here to see Music Mountain." "I come here often to look at it. You won't let me see you--what can I do but look at where you live? How long are you going to keep me away from you?" Nan did not answer. He urged her to speak. "You know very well it is my people that will never be friendly with you," she replied. "How can I be?" They were passing a lawn settee. He sat down. She would not follow. She stood in a sort of protest at his side, but he did not release her hand. "I'll tell you how you can be," he returned. "Make me one of your people." "That never can be," she declared stubbornly. "You know it as well as I do. Why do you say such things?" she demanded, drawing away her hand. "Do you want to know?" "No." "It's because I love you." She strove to command herself: "Whether you do or not can't make any difference," she returned steadily. "We are separated by everything. There's a gulf between us. It never can be crossed. We should both of us be wretched if it ever were crossed." He had risen from the bench and caught her hand: "It's because we haven't crossed it we're wretched," he said determinedly. "Cross it with me now!" He caught her in his arms. She struggled to escape. She knew what was coming and fought to keep her face from him. With resistless strength and yet carefully as a mother with an obstinate child, he held her slight body against his breast, relentlessly drawing her head closer. "Let me go!" she panted, twisting her averted head from the hollow of his arm. Drinking in the wine of her frightened breath, he bent over her in the darkness until his pulsing eagerness linked her warm lips to his own. She had surrendered to his first kiss. He spoke. "The gulf's crossed. Are you so awfully wretched?" They sank together down on the bench. "What," she faltered, "will become of me now?" "You are better off now than you ever were, Nan. You've gained this moment a big brother, a lover you can drag around the world after you with a piece of thread." "You act as if I could!" "I mean it: it's true. I'm pledged to you forever--you, to me, forever. We'll keep our secret till we can manage things; and we _will_ manage them. Everything will come right, Nan, because everything must come right." "I only hope you are not wrong," she murmured, her eyes turned toward the sombre mountains. CHAPTER XIX DANGER