"If I say that what you tell me makes me proud, I am saying too little." She shook her head firmly, with an air of finality that frightened Hemingway. "But what you ask--what you suggest is impossible." "You don't like me?" said Hemingway. "I like you very much," returned the girl, "and, if I don't seem unhappy that it can't be, it is because I always have known it can't be--" "Why can't it be?" rebelled Hemingway. "I don't mean that I can't understand your not wanting to marry me, but if I knew your objection, maybe, I could beat it down." Again, with the same air of finality, the girl moved her head slowly, as though considering each word; she began cautiously. "I cannot tell you the reason," she said, "because it does not concern only myself." "If you mean you care for some one else," pleaded Hemingway, "that does not frighten me at all." It did frighten him extremely, but, believing that a faint heart never won anything, he pretended to be brave. "For you," he boasted, "I would go down into the grave as deep as any man. He that hath more let him give. I know what I offer. I know I love you as no other man--" The girl backed away from him as though he had struck her. "You must not say that," she commanded. For the first time he saw that she was moved, that the fingers she laced and unlaced were trembling. "It is final!" exclaimed the girl. "I cannot marry--you, or any one. I--I have promised. I am not free." "Nothing in the world is final," returned Hemingway sharply, "except death." He raised his hat and, as though to leave her, moved away. Not because he admitted defeat, but because he felt that for the present to continue might lose him the chance to fight again. But, to deliver an ultimatum, he turned back. "As long as you are alive, and I am alive," he told her, "all things are possible. I don't give up hope. I don't give up you." The girl exclaimed with a gesture of despair. "He won't understand!" she cried. Hemingway advanced eagerly. "Help me to understand," he begged. "You won't understand," explained the girl, "that I am speaking the truth. You are right that things can change in the future, but nothing can change the past. Can't you understand that?" "What do I care for the past?" cried the young man scornfully. "I know you as well as though I had known you for a thousand years and I love you." The girl flushed crimson. "Not my past," she gasped. "I meant--" "I don't care what you meant," said Hemingway. "I'm not prying into your little secrets. I know only one thing--two things, that I love you and that, until you love me, I am going to make your life hell!" He caught at her hands, and for an instant she let him clasp them in both of his, while she looked at him.