“You don’t understand,” he reiterated patiently.  “It isn’t the love of a friend, or a comrade, or a sister, that Freckles wants from you; it is the love of a sweetheart.  And if to save the life he has offered for you, you are thinking of being generous and impulsive enough to sacrifice your future—­in the absence of your father, it will become my plain duty, as the protector in whose hands he has placed you, to prevent such rashness.  The very words you speak, and the manner in which you say them, prove that you are a mere child, and have not dreamed what love is.”

Then the Angel grew splendid.  A rosy flush swept the pallor of fear from her face.  Her big eyes widened and dilated with intense lights.  She seemed to leap to the height and the dignity of superb womanhood before their wondering gaze.

“I never have had to dream of love,” she said proudly.  “I never have known anything else, in all my life, but to love everyone and to have everyone love me.  And there never has been anyone so dear as Freckles.  If you will remember, we have been through a good deal together.  I do love Freckles, just as I say I do.  I don’t know anything about the love of sweethearts, but I love him with all the love in my heart, and I think that will satisfy him.”

“Surely it should!” muttered the man of knives and lancets.

McLean reached to take hold of the Angel, but she saw the movement and swiftly stepped back.

“As for my father,” she continued, “he at once told me what he learned from you about Freckles.  I’ve known all you know for several weeks.  That knowledge didn’t change your love for him a particle.  I think the Bird Woman loved him more.  Why should you two have all the fine perceptions there are?  Can’t I see how brave, trustworthy, and splendid he is?  Can’t I see how his soul vibrates with his music, his love of beautiful things and the pangs of loneliness and heart hunger?  Must you two love him with all the love there is, and I give him none?  My father is never unreasonable.  He won’t expect me not to love Freckles, or not to tell him so, if the telling will save him.”

She darted past McLean into Freckles’ room, closed the door, and turned the key.

CHAPTER XVIII

Wherein Freckles refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

Freckles lay on a flat pillow, his body immovable in a plaster cast, his maimed arm, as always, hidden.  His greedy gaze fastened at once on the Angel’s face.  She crossed to him with light step and bent over him with infinite tenderness.  Her heart ached at the change in his appearance.  He seemed so weak, heart hungry, so utterly hopeless, so alone.  She could see that the night had been one long terror.

For the first time she tried putting herself in Freckles’ place.  What would it mean to have no parents, no home, no name?  No name!  That was the worst of all.  That was to be lost—­indeed—­utterly and hopelessly lost.  The Angel lifted her hands to her dazed head and reeled, as she tried to face that proposition.  She dropped on her knees beside the bed, slipped her arm under the pillow, and leaning over Freckles, set her lips on his forehead.  He smiled faintly, but his wistful face appeared worse for it.  It hurt the Angel to the heart.