"Well, it wasn't my fight. And I didn't know how you'd take interference. You looked pretty well able to take care of yourself--in fact, you are. And then--I don't reckon it's going to do me any good to say this; but I might as well make a clean breast of it--I was just selfish enough to have a sneaking sort of hope, deep down, that maybe you'd find it so unpleasant you'd quit." "Mr. Trego!" No more than that; he had taken her breath away. "I guess that does sound funny," he admitted, evading her indignant eye. "You can't trust me, ever. I always say things the wrong way; that's the best thing I do." "If it's possible for you to explain . . ." "It's possible, all right, but it's anything but easy. What I meant was . . . Well, any fool could see that as long as you were so strong for this society racket I didn't stand much show." "Show?" "Of making good with you. Oh, look here, what's the use of beating about the bush? I'm a rude, two-fisted animal, and that's all against me. I never could flummux up my meaning successfully with a lot of words like--well, name no names. All the same, it's pretty hard for a fellow who knows the girl he's sweet on isn't crazy about him to come out in plain talk and say he loves her." She was dumb. She stared incredulously at his heavy, sincere, embarrassed face, as if it were something abnormal, almost supernatural, a hallucination. "Meaning" he faltered, "I mean to say--of course--I love you, Sar--er--ah--Miss Manwaring--and I think I can make you happy--" He was making heavy weather of his simple declaration, labouring like an old-fashioned square-rigger in a beam sea. "If you'll marry me, that is," he concluded in a breath, with obvious relief if with a countenance oddly shadowed in the staring moonlight by the heat of his distress. She tried, she meant to give him his answer without delay; it were kinder. But she found it impossible; the negative stuck stubbornly in her throat. She knew it would stab him deep. He wasn't the man to take love lightly; his emotions were anything but on the surface; their wounds would be slow to heal. And in spite of the positive animus she had all along entertained toward him, she didn't want to hurt him now; perhaps not strangely, remembering that this proposal of marriage was a direct, down-right protestation of implicit faith in her, uttered squarely on top of a most damnable indictment--remembering, too, that it was barely two hours since Sally herself had been ready, almost eager, to believe him capable of committing the very crime of implication in which he exonerated her without an instant's hesitation.