"I'm afraid of you--that's what's the matter. What have you got in you that I can't seem to melt? You kept away from me the first time ever I saw you. You've kept away ever since. You don't think I'm as good as you--and I'm not. But it's aggravating--it's damned aggravating--to have you rub it in. You've got something about you that I can't touch anywhere." And he paused, as though expecting her to deny it. "I don't know what right you have to say this," she exclaimed. In her swift rush to her own defence, she had dropped her guard. She realized it on the moment, heard his inevitable reply before he opened his mouth to the swift-flashing answer which, that outer self told her, was the only possible answer for him to make. "Only this right. I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you ever since I saw you down at the Judge's ranch, only I didn't know it then. I love you." Silence for a moment, and then, "I love you!" For just one instant, it seemed to her that she was swaying toward him in spite of herself. He made, curiously, no active motion toward her. That outer self of Eleanor's, reigning as always over her conscious self, commenting, criticising, seeing--that outer self remembered, above her mental turmoil, that never in all their later acquaintance had he tried even to touch her finger. "Oh, don't!" she cried, "please don't!" He made a growl in his throat, the adult counterpart to a baby's cry of disappointment. "Didn't I tell you?" he said, "and now I've laid myself wide open for a throw-down." "If you call it that. Oh Bertram--" he and she both noticed the shift to his familiar name--"I'm afraid I haven't been fair to you. Oh, have I been fair?" He paused as though considering a whole new range of ideas. "Yes, I guess you have," he responded at length. "You're a man," she said, "and a big man. I suppose I ought--to love you. To have the power of loving you in me. And oh, there have been moments when I thought I could." She stopped as though appalled by the lengths to which she had gone. "You see, I'm trying to be fair now. I'm telling you everything." And then, with the thought which succeeded, it was as though she felt the physical tingle of bay leaves in her nostrils, "or nearly everything." Through the open French windows came the cheery voice of Kate Waddington. "Tea is served, ladies and gentlemen!" "All right--be along presently!" called Bertram. And then to Eleanor: "You must tell me--you can't keep me hanging by the toes until I see you again." "The rest means--since I am being perfectly fair to you--that I can't tell." Now something like strong emotion touched her voice--"Don't think I am coquetting with you--don't believe that it is anything but my effort to be fair." She turned on this, and stepped through the open window.