“There’s a sort of a fate in it,” said Ronicky slowly.  “I don’t think I could promise.  There’s a chill in my bones that tells me I’m going to meet up with him one of these days.”

She gasped at that, and, stepping back from him, she appeared to be searching her mind to discover something which would finally and completely convince him.  At length she found it.

“Do I look to you like a coward?” she said.  “Do I seem to be weak-kneed?”

He shook his head.

“And what will a woman fight hardest for?”

“For the youngsters she’s got,” said Ronicky after a moment’s thought.  “And, outside of that, I suppose a girl will fight the hardest to marry the gent she loves.”

“And to keep from marrying a man she doesn’t love, as she’d try to keep from death?”

“Sure,” said Ronicky.  “But these days a girl don’t have to marry that way.”

“I am going to marry the man with the sneer,” she said simply enough, and with dull, patient eyes she watched the face of Ronicky wrinkle and grow pale, as if a heavy fist had struck him.

“You?” he asked.  “You marry him?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And you hate the thought of him!”

“I—­I don’t know.  He’s kind—­”

“You hate him,” insisted Ronicky.  “And he’s to have you, that cold-eyed snake, that devil of a man?” He moved a little, and she turned toward him, smiling faintly and allowing the light to come more clearly and fully on her face.  “You’re meant for a king o’ men, lady; you got the queen in you—­it’s in the lift of your head.  When you find the gent you can love, why, lady, he’ll be pretty near the richest man in the world!”

The ghost of a flush bloomed in her cheeks, but her faint smile did not alter, and she seemed to be hearing him from far away.  “The man with the sneer,” she said at length, “will never talk to me like that, and still—­I shall marry him.”

“Tell me your name,” said Ronicky Doone bluntly.

“My name is Ruth Tolliver.”

“Listen to me, Ruth Tolliver:  If you was to live a thousand years, and the gent with the smile was to keep going for two thousand, it’d never come about that he could ever marry you.”

She shook her head, still watching him as from a distance.

“If I’ve crossed the country and followed a hard trail and come here tonight and stuck my head in a trap, as you might say, for the sake of a gent like Bill Gregg—­fine fellow though he is—­what d’you think I would do to keep a girl like you from life-long misery?”

And he dwelt on the last word until the girl shivered.

“It’s what it means,” said Ronicky Doone, “life-long misery for you.  And it won’t happen—­it can’t happen.”

“Are you mad—­are you quite mad?” asked the girl.  “What on earth have I and my affairs got to do with you?  Who are you?”

“I dunno,” said Ronicky Doone.  “I suppose you might say I’m a champion of lost causes, lady.  Why have I got something to do with you?  I’ll tell you why:  Because, when a girl gets past being just pretty and starts in being plumb beautiful, she lays off being the business of any one gent—­her father or her brother—­she starts being the business of the whole world.  You see?  They come like that about one in ten million, and I figure you’re that one, lady.”