"I'm a kid, after all. I couldn't go away without--this." "I wish you had! I wish you had!" she answered, at his smile. "I wish I had never seen you in the world!" His heart was sore for jesting, but he would not change his way. "If not in the world, where _would_ you have wished to see me, then?" "I never wished to see you at all!" she replied. "Your joke has gone too far. You have utterly mistaken my sense of gratitude." "Guess not," he said. "I haven't looked for gratitude--nor wanted it, either." "You had no right!" she continued. "You have said things--done things--you have taken shameful advantage--you have treated me like--I suppose like--that other--that other---- You dared!" Van's face took on an expression of hardness, to mask the hurt of his heart. "Who says so?" he demanded quietly. "You know better." "It's true!" she answered hotly. "You had no right! It was mere brute strength! You cannot deny what you have been--to that miserable woman!" Tears of anger sped from her eyes, and she dashed them hotly away. Van stepped a little closer. "Beth," he said, suddenly taking her hand, "none of this is true, and you know it. You're angry with that woman, not with me." She snatched her hand away. "You shan't!" she said. "Don't you dare to touch me again. I hate you--hate you for what you have done! You've been a brute probably to her as well as to me!" "To you? When?" he demanded "All the time! To-day!--Now!--when you say I'm angry at a--woman who is dead!--a woman who died for you!" It hit him. "Poor Queenie," he said, "poor child." "Yes--poor Queenie!" Her eyes blazed in the moonlight. "To think that you dared to treat me like----" "Beth!" he interrupted, "I won't permit it. I told you to-day I loved you. That makes things right. You love me, and that makes them sacred. I'd do all I've done over again--_all_ of it--Queenie and the rest! I'm not ashamed, nor sorry for anything I've done. I love you--I say--I love you. That's what I've never done before--and never said I did--and that's what makes things right!" Beth was confused by what he said--confused in her judgment, her emotions. Weakly she clung to her argument. "You haven't any right--it isn't true when you say I love you. I don't! I won't! You can't deny that woman died of a broken heart for you!" "I don't deny anything about her," he said. "I tried to be her friend. God knows she needed friends. She was only a child, a pretty child. I'm sorry. I've always been sorry. She knew I was only a friend." She felt he was honest. She knew he was wrung--suffering, but not in his conscience. Yet what was she to think? She had heard it all--all of Queenie's story. "You kissed her," she said, and red flamed up in her cheeks. "It was all she asked," he answered simply. "She was dying." "And you're paying for her funeral." "I said I was her friend."