“Oh, I hope you will,” said Eve, sincerely.

“Your saying that makes it look farther off than ever,” responded Wade, with a wry smile.

“My saying that?  But why?” she asked in surprise.

“Because,” he answered, after a moment’s silence, “if you knew what it is I want, I don’t think you’d want me to have it, and that you don’t know proves that I’m a long way off from it.”

“It sounds like a riddle,” said Eve, perplexedly.  “Please, Mr. Herrick, what is the answer?”

Wade clenched his hands in his pockets and looked very straight ahead up the road.

“You,” he said.

“Me?” The sunshade was raised for an instant. “Oh!” The sunshade dropped.  They walked on in silence for a few paces.  Then said Wade, with a stolen glance at the white silken barrier: 

“I hope I haven’t offended you, Miss Walton.  I had no more intention of saying anything like that when we started out than—­than the man in the moon.  But it’s true, and you might as well know it now as any other time.  You’re what I want, more than I’ve ever wanted anything before or ever shall again, and you’re what I’m very much afraid I won’t get.  I’m not quite an idiot, after all.  I know mighty well that—­that I’m not the sort of fellow you’d fall in love with, barring a miracle.  But maybe I’m trusting to the miracle.  Anyhow, I’m cheeky enough to hope that—­that you may get to like me enough to marry me some day.  Do you think you ever could?”

“But—­oh, I don’t know what to say,” cried Eve, softly.  “I haven’t thought—!”

“Of course not,” interrupted Wade, cheerfully.  “Why should you?  All I ask is that you think about it now—­or some time when you—­when you’re not busy, you know.  I guess I could say a whole lot about how much I love you, but you’re not ready to hear that yet and I won’t.  If you’ll just understand that you’re the one girl in the whole darn—­in the whole world for me, Miss Walton, we’ll let it go at that for the present.  You think about it.  I’m not much on style and looks, and I don’t know much outside of mining, but I pick up things pretty quickly and I could learn.  I don’t say anything about money, except that if you cared for me I’d be thankful I had plenty of it, so that I could give you most anything you wanted.  You—­you don’t mind thinking it over, do you?”

“No,” said Eve, a little unsteadily, “but—­oh, I do wish you wouldn’t talk as you do!  You make me feel so little and worthless, and I don’t like to feel that way.”

“But how?” cried Wade, in distress.  “I don’t mean to!”

“I know you don’t.  That’s just it.  But you do.  When you talk so meanly of yourself, I mean.  Just as though any girl wouldn’t feel proud at having—­at hearing—­oh, you must know what I mean!” And Eve turned a flushed, beseeching face toward him.

“Not quite, I’m afraid,” Wade answered.  “Anyhow, I don’t want you to feel proud, Miss Walton.  If any one should feel proud, it’s I, to think you’ve let me say this to you and haven’t sent me off about my business.”