"You are certainly talking very strangely." "I hate your father," went on Paul, and his voice, although very quiet, was very intense. "The first time I saw him I hated him. No, no one is listening, you need not fear. I believed he was the tool of the Wilsons. I believe it still! I don't think he fought me fairly either. I think he dislikes me, too. But, but--shall I tell you something?" "I think you had better not," she replied. Even although she was surrounded by a crowd of people, and their voices were wellnigh lost in the hum of conversation, she was afraid. "I do not think I can help myself. Miss Bolitho, I have been sustained in all the work of my life by one thought--I want to win you for my wife! Do you think it's possible?" And then, without waiting for her reply, he went on: "It must be possible. It shall be possible! I will make it so." "I must ask you to excuse me. I have some friends over here wishing to speak to me." "Not yet," he said. "You must forgive my rudeness, but when a man feels as I feel, and have felt for years, niceties of behaviour don't count. You, in spite of everything, have become the one thing in life worth living for, and yet I ought to be ashamed of speaking to you now. I have no right!" She looked at him wonderingly, as if not understanding what he meant. "You see, I have no name," he said. "I don't know who my father is or where he is. I only know that he and my mother were married in Scotland, and he left her the day after the wedding. She, in her trouble, went to her mother's old home in Cornwall, and was looked upon as a poor outcast thing. She lay down on a bank near a little hamlet called Stepaside, and thought she was going to die. From there she was taken to a workhouse, where I was born. She would not tell her name, and that was why I was called Stepaside. It's a terrible handicap, isn't it? No father, no name! Ned Wilson made the most of that at the election; but there, I've fought it down so far. Will you promise me something? I hope you will, I think you will. I don't think I'm altogether a clown, and I feel sometimes as though I can do great things if you---- You see, you are everything to me, everything! Promise me this: If I find out who my father is, may I speak to you again? Do you think--do you think it is possible for you----?" At that moment some acquaintances came up, and Mary Bolitho turned as if to leave him. "But give me an answer before you go!" he said eagerly. "Is there any possibility--in spite of my handicap?" And then he felt that his heart had, for a moment, ceased to beat. He forgot where he was. The chatter of the crowd was nothing to him; it did not exist. "Everything is possible to a man who doesn't know when he's beaten!" she said with a radiant smile, and then turned towards her friends.