“Now listen to me—­be good and don’t interrupt!  There!—­not so near; you can hear what I have to say well enough where you are.  That will do.”

Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat down.

“Now,” said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before her, “I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn’t to—­or at least say it—­but I do.  There!  But because I do believe you—­it seems to me all wrong!  For the very reasons that you give for not having spoken to me before, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same reasons why you should not speak to me now.  You see, all this time you have let nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me.  In everybody’s eyes you and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive, college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally came here to this hotel as customers.  In everybody’s eyes I have been only the rich hotel-keeper’s popular daughter who sometimes waited upon you—­but nothing more.  But at least we were then pretty much alike, and as good as each other.  And now, as soon as you have become suddenly rich, and, of course, the superior, you rush down here to ask me to acknowledge it by accepting you!”

“You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty,” burst out Barker vehemently, but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the young lady’s fingers on the keys.  He sank back in his chair.

“Of course you never meant it,” she said with an odd laugh; “but everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to everybody in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have just made to me.  Everybody will say I accepted you for your money; everybody will say it was a put-up job of my father’s.  Everybody will say that you threw yourself away on me.  And I don’t know but that they would be right.  Sit down, please! or I shall play again.

“You see,” she went on, without looking at him, “just now you like to remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter girl, but if I became your wife it’s just what you would like to forget.  And I shouldn’t, for I should always like to think of the time when you came here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes when you couldn’t, just to see me; and how we used to make excuses to speak with each other over the dishes.  You don’t know what these things mean to a woman who”—­she hesitated a moment, and then added abruptly, “but what does that matter?  You would not care to be reminded of it.  So,” she said, rising up with a grave smile and grasping her hands tightly behind her, “it’s a good deal better that you should begin to forget it now.  Be a good boy and take my advice.  Go to San Francisco.  You will meet some girl there in a way you will not afterward regret.  You are young, and your riches, to say nothing,” she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat inconsistent with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips, “of your kind and simple heart, will secure that which the world would call unselfish affection from one more equal to you, but would always believe was only bought if it came from me.”