She turned back, facing him, and slowly they started toward the house. This time she took his arm without being asked, and the act gave him additional delight. He allowed the natural weight of his arm to gently press her hand against his side and she did not resent it. In fact, he felt as if her touch was responsive. The moonlight fell on her bare head and played in her wonderful hair, upon which the moisture of the night was settling. Half-way between the barn and the house there was an empty road-wagon. Its massive tongue stood out straight a foot or so above the ground. To his wonderment, Tilly sat down on it, thrusting her little feet out in front of her. "Let's sit here," she said. "They won't be back for some time yet." He complied, his wonder and delight growing. They were silent. Finally she spoke again. "You are the strangest man I ever saw," she said, looking into his face with her calm, probing eyes. "Am I?" he asked. "Why, how so?" "I don't know," she made answer, thoughtfully, and she locked her little hands in her lap and looked down. "I can't make you out. You are so--so gentle and tender with me. You are a mystery, a deep mystery. You don't seem to take to women in general, and yet, and yet with me--" She sighed and broke off abruptly. In his all but dazed delight he could not supply the words she had failed to summon, though he knew what he would have said could he but have untangled his enthralled tongue. "Oh, I'm no mystery!" He tried to laugh away his awkwardness. "I'm as plain as an old shoe; no frills about me. You ask the boys that work with me." She was unconvinced. He saw her shake her wise little head and twist her fingers together as she answered: "A girl I know who saw you on the platform that day said she'd bet you'd had an unfortunate love-affair. She said nothing else would make as--as fine a young man as you are shun all the girls like you do. She even hinted that maybe you were--were married down in Georgia and for some reason or other was not telling it." "Oh no, I'm not married," he laughed. "Gee! Sam would think that is funny. Me married!" "Then you _have_ had a--a love-affair with some girl, and--" "Wrong again!" he laughed, deep in the throat of his ebullient joy. "I've just been a sort of stay-at-home, pretty busy, you know. I've had my hands full of night work, figuring, writing, and planning, and through the day I've been hard at it, as a general thing. No, I'm just, I reckon, not a natural ladies' man." How could he explain to her what he had never understood or even tried to fathom, the reason why he was different from other young men of his age whose manner of life he had only superficially observed?