She resisted, and turned on him a pale face, where emotions, never stirred before, were quivering. She was moved to the bottom of her soul. Something in her face made him shrink a little. With her hand against his breast she gave him the beautiful look of a woman’s first sense of her surrender. He stifled the sudden twinge of his conscience and again tried to draw her close to him. But she held him off with the hand on his breast and said--as thousands of girls say every year: “Do you really love me?” “More than the whole world,” he answered glibly, but with the roughened voice of real feeling. “Why?” she said with a tremulous smile, “why should you?” “Because you are you.” “But I’m just a small insignificant person here, without any relations, and poor, so poor.” “Those things don’t matter when a man loves a woman. It’s you I want, not anything you might have or might be.” “But you’re so clever and have lived everywhere and seen everything, and I’m so--so countrified and stupid.” “You’re Mariposa. That’s enough for me.” “All I can bring you for my portion is my heart.” “And that’s all I want.” “You love me enough to marry me?” His eyes that had been looking ardently into her face, shifted. “I love you enough to be a fool about you. Does that please you?” Her murmured answer was lost in the first kiss of love that had ever been pressed on her lips. She drew back from it, pale and thrilled, not abashed, but looking at her lover with eyes before which his drooped. It was a sacred moment to her. “How wonderful,” she whispered, “that you should care for me.” “It would have been more wonderful if I hadn’t.” “And that you came now, when everything was so dark and lonely. You don’t know how horribly lonely I felt this evening, thinking of leaving here to-morrow and going among strangers.” “But that’s all over now. You need never be lonely again. I’ll always be there to take care of you. We’ll always be together.” “Don’t you think things often change when they get to their very worst? It seemed to me to-night that I was just about to open a door that led into the world, where nobody cared for me, or knew me, or wanted me.” “One person wanted you, desperately.” “And then, all in a moment, my whole life is changed. It’s not an hour ago that I was sitting here looking into the fire thinking how miserable I was, and now--” “You are in my arms!” he interrupted, and drew her against him for his kiss. She turned her face away and pressed it into his shoulder, as he held her close, and said: