Graham flushed. "No, it isn't that," he asserted earnestly. "It isn't for the benefit of the others that I speak, but because of the effect on yourself. It isn't _healthy_. You are wasting time that might be very much better employed; you get into an abnormal attitude toward other people; you are laying stress on a _means_ to which there is no _end_, and that is abnormal. I don't know that you understand what I mean; it's philosophy," he concluded, smiling in an attempt to end lightly. "No, I do not understand in the least. All I understand is that you object to my seeing a certain man, without giving any particular reason for your objections." "It isn't especially elevating for you to sit every evening in a bar room crowded with swearing and drinking men who are not at all of your class," suggested Graham. "The language they use ought to teach you that." "They are my people," cried Molly with a sudden flash of indignation, "and they are honest and brave and true-hearted. They do not speak as grammatically as you or I; but you have been to college, and I have been blessed with a chance to read. And whatever language they speak, they do not use it to talk of other people behind their backs!" She reflected a moment. "But that isn't the question," she went on, with a touch of her native shrewdness. "I understood you to make a request of me." Graham had not so understood himself, but he had a request ready, nevertheless. "That you be a little more careful in the way you go about with Mortimer, then," he begged. "And why?" she asked again. "Because--because he means to do you harm!" cried Jack Graham, driven to the point at last. She rose from the log. "Ah, that is what I wanted to hear!" she returned in level tones--"the accusation. You will tell him this to his face?" Graham paused. His anxiety was a tangle of suspicions born of his knowledge of men, his intuitions, and his fears. Looking at it dispassionately from the outside, what right had he to interfere? Graham was much in love, brave enough to carry through the inevitable row, and quite willing as far as himself was concerned, to do so; but he could not fail to see that, however the affair came out, it would irretrievably injure the girl's reputation. No one would believe that he would go to such lengths on suspicion of merely future harm. To the camp it would mean his proved knowledge of present facts. So he hesitated. "You will not, I see," concluded the girl, moving away; "rest easy, I shall say nothing to Harry about it. I don't know what he would do if he heard of it." She began to walk toward the ford, every motion expressing contempt. She believed she had proved Graham a coward, and this had rehabilitated her self-respect. She was no longer ashamed before him. At the water's brink she turned back.