“A signal?  What do you mean?  Do you suspect me of putting out a beacon light for a cheap night adventure with some man?  Do you expect me to tolerate that sort of thing from you?”

“I ask you to tolerate nothing,” I said.  “I am not in the habit of suspecting ladies.  But I ask you if you can explain the light on that side of the house.”

“Jack,” she said, flinging out a hand, “forgive me.  I admit that Captain Orme and I carried on a bit of a flirtation, after he came back—­after he had told me about you.  But why should that—­why, he did not know you were here.”

“No,” said I, dryly, “I don’t think he did.  I am glad to know that you found something to amuse you in my absence.”

“Let us not speak of amusements in the absence of each other,” she said bitterly.  “Think of your own.  But when you came back, it was all as it was last spring.  I could love no other man but you, Jack, and you know it.  After all, if we are quits, let us stay quits, and forgive, and forget—­let us forget, Jack.”

I sat looking at her as she turned to me, pleading, imploring in her face, her gesture.

“Jack,” she went on, “a woman needs some one to take care of her, to love her.  I want you to take care of me—­you wouldn’t throw me over for just a little thing—­when all the time you yourself—­”

“The light shone for miles across the valley,” said I.

“Precisely, and that was how he happened to come up, I do not doubt.  He thought we were still up about the place.  My father has always told him to make this his home, and not to go to the tavern.  They are friends politically, in many ways, as you know.”

“The light then was that of some servant?”

“Certainly it was.  I know nothing of it.  It was an accident, and yet you blame me as though—­why, it was all accident that you met Captain Orme.  Tell me, Jack, did you quarrel?  What did he tell you?”

“Many things.  He is no fit man for you to know, nor for any woman.”

“Do I not know that?  I will never see him again.”

“No, he will never come back here again, that is fairly sure.  He has promised that; and he asked me to promise one thing, by the way.”

“What was that?”

“To keep my promise with you.  He asked me to marry you!  Why?”

Infinite wit of woman!  What chance have we men against such weapons?  It was coquetry she forced to her face, and nothing else, when she answered:  “So, then, he was hard hit, after all!  I did not know that.  How tender of him, to wish me married to another than himself!  The conceit of you men is something wondrous.”

“Mr. Orme was so kind as to inform me that I was a gentleman, and likewise a very great ass.”

“Did you promise him to keep your promise, Jack?” She put both her hands on mine as it lay on the chair arm.  Her eyes looked into mine straight and full.  It would have taken more imagination than mine to suspect the slightest flickering in their lids.  “Jack,” she murmured over and over again.  “I love you!  I have never loved any other man.”