“Yes?”

“Will you accept?”

He looked at her, surprised.  “Didn’t Win tell you?  I said right away I couldn’t accept.  He knew that.”

“Oh!  I don’t believe he did tell me.  Perhaps you hadn’t decided then.”  Privately she was determining to settle some day with Winthrop Beresford for leading her into this.  He had purposely kept silent, she knew now, in the hope that she would talk to Tom Morse about it.  “But I’m glad you’ve decided against going in.”

“Why?”

“It’s dangerous, and I don’t think it has much future.”

“Win likes it.”

“Yes, Win does.  He’ll get a commission one of these days.”

“He deserves one.  I—­I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

He was walking beside her.  Quickly her glance flashed up at him.  Was that the reason he had held himself so aloof from her?

“I think we shall, very likely, if you mean Win and I. He’s always happy, isn’t he?  And I try to be.  I’m sorry he’s leaving this part of the country.  Writing-on-Stone is a long way from here.  He may never get back.  I’ll miss him a good deal.  Of course you will too.”

This was plain enough, but Tom could not accept it at face value.  Perhaps she meant that she would miss him until Win got ready to send for her.  An idea lodged firmly in the mind cannot be ejected at an instant’s notice.

“Yes, I’ll miss him.  He’s a splendid fellow.  I’ve never met one like him, so staunch and cheerful and game.  Sometime I’d like to tell you about that trip we took.  You’d be proud of him.”

“I’m sure all his friends are,” she said, smiling a queer little smile that was lost in the darkness.

“He was a very sick man, in a great deal of pain, and we had a rather dreadful time of it.  Of course it hit him far harder than it did either West or me.  But never a whimper out of him from first to last.  Always cheerful, always hopeful, with a little joke or a snatch of a song, even when it looked as though we couldn’t go on another day.  He’s one out of ten thousand.”

“I heard him say that about another man—­only I think he said one in fifty thousand,” she made comment, almost in a murmur.

“Any girl would be lucky to have such a man for a husband,” he added fatuously.

“Yes.  I hope he’ll find some nice one who will appreciate him.”

This left no room for misunderstanding.  Tom’s brain whirled.  “You—­you and he haven’t had any—­quarrel?”

“No.  What made you think so?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose I’m an idiot.  But I thought—­”

He stopped.  She took up his unfinished sentence.

“You thought wrong.”