Her breath left her and she turned a frightened face on him. "Why?" she gasped. "What for?" He laid his hand on hers and said quietly: "Because, as you say, the hardest part of the journey is yet to come, and I am--well--not a strong man any more. The trip hasn't done for me what I hoped. If by some mischance--if anything should happen to me--then I'd know you'd be taken care of, protected and watched over by some one who could be trusted, whose right it was to do that." "Oh, no. Oh, no," she cried in a piercing note of protest. "I couldn't, I couldn't." She made as if to rise, then sank back, drawn down by his grasping hand. He thought her reluctance natural, a girl's shrinking at the sudden intrusion of marriage into the pretty comedy of courtship. "Susan, I would like it," he pleaded. "No," she tried to pull her hand away, as if wishing to draw every particle of self together and shut it all within her own protecting shell. "Why not?" "It's--it's--I don't want to be married out here in the wilds. I want to wait and marry as other girls do, and have a real wedding and a house to go to. I should hate it. I couldn't. It's like a squaw. You oughtn't to ask it." Her terror lent her an unaccustomed subtlety. She eluded the main issue, seizing on objections that did not betray her, but that were reasonable, what might have been expected by the most unsuspicious of men: "And as for your being afraid of falling sick in these dreadful places, isn't that all the more reason why I should be free to give all my time and thought to you? If you don't feel so strong, then marrying is the last thing I'd think of doing. I'm going to be with you all the time, closer than I ever was before. No man's going to come between us. Marry David and push you off into the background when you're not well and want me most--that's perfectly ridiculous." She meant all she said. It was the truth, but it was the truth reinforced, given a fourfold strength by her own unwillingness. The thought that she had successfully defeated him, pushed the marriage away into an indefinite future, relieved her so that the dread usually evoked by his ill health was swept aside. She turned on him a face, once again bright, all clouds withdrawn, softened into dimpling reassurance. "What an idea!" she said. "Men have no sense." "Very well, spoiled girl. I suppose we'll have to put it off till we get to California." She dropped back full length on the ground, and in the expansion of her relief laid her cheek against the hand that clasped hers. "And until we get the house built," she cried, beginning to laugh. "And the garden laid out and planted, I suppose?" "Of course. And the vines growing over the front porch." "Why not over the second story? We'll have a second story by that time." "Over the whole house, up to the chimneys." They both laughed, a cheerful bass and a gay treble, sweeping out across the unquiet water.