She looked at him with a straight, unwinking gaze. Her mouth quivered, then shut tight, lips compressed. The flush that had tinged her creamy skin faded into a pallor on which tiny freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose in pin-points of tan. She tried to withdraw her hand. Rod's grip tightened. "No," he said. "You can't get away." "Don't be silly," she whispered. "I hate sentimental men." "Am I?" "Well, you're manifesting symptoms." The color came back to her face with a rush. "Perhaps you're right." Rod's fingers relaxed. The words that hovered on the tip of his tongue failed of utterance. Sentimental. It was like cold water on him. He had rather prided himself on his freedom from sentimental episodes. "Yes, perhaps you're right," he repeated. "I'd have been asking you to marry me in another breath. I have a mind to propose formally, just to see how ruthlessly you would turn me down." "The ruthless turn-down would come from another source--not from me," she answered somberly. "You'd be marrying me," Rod repossessed himself of her hand, of both hands, "not my family or my acquaintances. They don't count so much as you think. We could have a whale of a time together, Mary. You're the only girl I know that's real, honest-to-God girl. You always were. I wonder if you have the same queer sort of feeling about me that I have for you?" "I expect I have," she owned. "I'm not a fool, or a liar, or inclined to be evasive, Rod. I don't care for you in a cool, quiet, calculating fashion. I'm not made that way, any more than you are. But, oh, Rod, I've had a lot of unpleasant wisdom forced on me since you went away four years ago. It won't do. It won't do!" "Why not?" Rod demanded. "If we choose to say it will, who's to stop us? We're ourselves, and living our lives is our own affair." "Living our lives isn't just a matter of doing whatever a passionate impulse may urge us to do," she answered slowly. "What do you suppose your family would do and say when you announced your intention of playing King Cophetua to the beggar maid?" "Whatever they jolly well pleased," Rod growled his defiance. "Besides I'm no king, neither are you a beggar. You exaggerate. Surely you haven't so humble an opinion of yourself?" "It isn't humility. Far from it," the girl flashed back. "I may dislike the station in life in which it has pleased God to place me. But don't ever think I'm humble or diffident about it, or myself, or my people. Oh, no, Mr. Roderick Sylvester Norquay. But I don't wear blinkers. I see a lot of things I used to be unconscious of. One of them is that men like you are regarded as one class of beings, and girls like me quite another. Isn't it so?"