"Any other chance?" says I. "For what? To make love to a girl that ain't had much experience--to make love to her because she's got a load of money? I've seen some sort of dirt done in my life," says I, "but this is the lowest down I ever seen," says I. "And Bonnie Bell," says I--she still had me around the neck, holding my arms down, and I didn't want to hurt her--"how'll I tell the old man? You know I've got to come through with him. You, the girl we loved so much, Bonnie Bell," says I, "we never thought you'd class yourself below your own level." "She hasn't!" says he, right sudden then. "It wasn't her fault. She hasn't promised a thing to me, and you know that. She's not to blame for a thing, and you know that too. She hasn't said a word she couldn't say before all the world. What more do you want? She's too good a girl to get the worst of it. Her father's too good a man to get the worst of it too. She'd never let him." "She won't have to do that," says I. "I'll take care of that. That's my business." "Curly," says she, "what are you going to do? Don't you love my father at all--or me? You're like another father to me. And I've loved you; and I always will, whatever you do to me." I couldn't put her arms down--I wasn't very strong, because I was thinking. "If you tell my father," says she, "you'd break his heart. Cover it up for me, Curly--I've not promised anything. But, oh, Curly, I didn't mean harm to anyone; and I'll never be happy any more." "You see what you've done!" says I to him after a while. He got white now, instead of red. "How can I make it up? I can't stand to hear her talk that way," he says. "Whose business is it how she talks?" says I to him. "Damn you! What right have you to come here and make her unhappy for a minute? Didn't you know how we loved her?" "Everyone does," says he. "Till I die I'll do that. How can I help it any more than you can? And if I've hurt her now," says he, "God do so to me and more also. But I've declared myself--I'll not take back a word. I didn't lie then and I won't now." He seemed game. Still, so long as it's just talking, you can't always tell how much of a bluff a man is throwing. "If it'll make her happy for me to go away and never come back," says he, "I'll do that. I don't want to play any game except on the square. Don't start anything that can't be ever mended," says he. "It's started now," says I. "Maybe you can talk a girl down, but you can't us." "What're you going to do, Bonnie Bell?" says I to her, and I taken her hands now in mine. "You've heard me and you've heard him. Which do you want, him or us--us that's loved you and give you everything we had, or him, this here coward, that come in the back way--our worst enemy's hired man? You got to choose."