Next, Ward's lips joined the mutiny against his reason, and laid themselves upon the parted, panting lips of Billy Louise, as though that was where they belonged. Billy Louise had probably not expected anything like that, though of a truth one can never safely guess at what is in the mind of a girl. She tried to pull herself free, and when she could make no impression upon the grip of those arms--they had been growing muscles of iron manipulating that goldpan, remember!--she very sensibly yielded to necessity and stood still. "Stop, Ward! You--I--you haven't any right to--" "Well, give me the right, then." Ward managed to find voice enough to make the demand, and then he kissed her many times before he attempted to say another word. Lord, but he had been hungry for her, these last three months! "You'll give me the right, won't you, Wilhemina?" he murmured against her ear, brushing a lock of hair away with his lips. "You know you belong to me, don't you? And I belong to you--body and soul. You know that, don't you? I've known it ever since the world was made. I knew it when God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. You were it." "You sill-y thing." Billy Louise did not seem to know whether she wanted to laugh or cry. "What do you think you're talking about, anyway?" "About the way the world was made." Ward loosened his clasp a little and looked down deep into her eyes. "My world, I mean." He bent and kissed her again, gravely and very, very tenderly. "Oh, Wilhemina, you know--" he waited, gazing down with that intent look which had a new softness behind it--"you know there's nothing in this world but you. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't. There never will be." Billy Louise reached up her hands to his shoulders and tried to give him a shake. "Is that why you've stuck yourself in these hills for three whole months and never come near? You fibber!" "That's why, lady-girl. I've been sticking here, working like one son-of-a-gun--for you. So I could have you sooner." He lifted his bent head and looked around the little cabin like a man who has just wakened to his surroundings. "I knocked off work a little while ago, and I was going to see you. I couldn't stand it any longer. And--here you iss!" he went on, giving her shoulders a little squeeze. "A straight case of 'two souls with but a single thought,' don't you reckon?" Billy Louise, by a visible effort, brought the situation down to earth. She twisted herself free and went over to the stove and saved a frying-pan of potatoes from burning to a crisp.