“Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?” she mused, biting her pencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can’t remember how many times three goes into twenty-seven.

“Sometimes.  Sometimes I mean more.”  I set my teeth, closed my eyes—­mentally—­and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down.  “For instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether you want to or not, because I shall make you, I mean every word of it—­and a lot more.”

That was going some, I fancy!  I was so scared at myself I didn’t dare breathe.  I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, all golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight together that they ached afterward.

The point of her pencil came off with a snap.  I heard it, but I was afraid to look.  “Do you?  How very odd!” Her voice sounded queer, as if it had been squeezed dry of every sort of emotion.  “And—­Edith?”

I looked at her then, fast enough.  “Edith?” I stared at her stupidly.  “What the—­what’s Edith got to do with it?”

“Possibly nothing”—­in the same squeezed tone.  “Men are so—­er—­irresponsible; and you say you don’t always mean—­Still, when a man writes pages and pages to a girl every week for nearly a year, one naturally supposes—­”

“Oh, look here!” I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough with her.  “Edith doesn’t care a rap about me, and you know it.  And she knows I don’t care, and—­and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr. Terence Weaver.”

“My Mr. Terence Weaver?” She was looking down at me sidewise, in a perfectly maddening way.  “You are really very—­er—­funny, Mr. Carleton.”

“Well,” I rapped out between my teeth, “I don’t feel funny.  I feel—­”

“No?  But, really, you know, you act that way.”

I saw she was getting all the best of it—­and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl.  I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.

“That depends on the view-point,” I grinned.  “Would you think it funny if I carried you off—­really, you know—­and—­er—­married you and made you live happy—­”

“You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all—­”

“Necessary?” I hinted.

“Plausible,” she supplied sweetly.

“But would you think it funny, if I did?”

She regarded her broken pencil ruefully—­or pretended to—­and pinched her brows together in deep meditation.  Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood—­But, there, no Barney for me.

“I—­might,” she decided at last.  “It would be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you’d manage it; I’m not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn’t be easy to—­er—­carry me off.  Would you wear a mask—­a black velvet mask?  I should insist upon black velvet.  And would you say:  ‘Gadzooks, madam!  I command you not to scream!’ Would you?” She leaned toward me, and her eyes—­well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish.