Baird was not to be denied any longer. He pulled her hands from his shoulders, drew her forcibly into his arms, and lifting her bowed head, found her lips. He kissed away resistance, her efforts to speak, plead and demanded until he won response, arms that circled his neck and clasped him, and then her long and passionate kiss. Even when her arms slid from his neck and her head dropped back against his shoulder, he held her imprisoned. He put back her fallen hair and kissed her brow and her cheek and her throat, until the chill of something striven for and still unpossessed touched him. He looked down at her. "What is it?" he asked. "You love me--why aren't you happy?" Her eyes were brimming with tears. "I do love you--but--" She tried to free herself, and he let her go, for he was sobered by the pallor that had replaced the hot flush in her cheeks. "What's the difficulty, Ann--tell me!" he demanded. "It's not going to make any difference, whatever it is--but tell me." "It's something I can't tell, but it may bring disgrace on me an' that will be disgrace on you--if I let you marry me." "It's nothing you have done--I know that!" Baird said quickly. "What other people have done doesn't matter to me.... You mean the true inwardness of all that tragedy last spring?... Why, Ann, I've always known that half that story hadn't been told." "I was the cause of it all.... Any day it may come out who I am and worse things than that for you to bear. That was the reason I made you go away an' wouldn't answer your letters." "Westmore and Penniman pride--there it is again!" Baird said. "I don't want your secret, dear. I think there's not much you could tell me that I haven't already guessed--in spite of Ben." He circled her with his arms. "Do you think that anything could drive me away from you now--after that kiss of yours?... Tell me again that you love me! Tell me!" Her answer was a drooping glance and her slow smile, which Baird stole from her lips. "Ann, you're here in my arms and I'm holding you close, but I've a queer feeling that I'm clasping something that may slip away any moment--it makes me want to hold you tighter. It won't be like that by and by--when you're all mine?" "I don't know," she said slowly. "I'll always be wanting to be loved an' not thinkin' so much about whether I'm lovin' or not.... I know it was like heaven when Edward told me he was my father and how much he loved me. I'd been wanting to be loved like that--all my life--"