The girl hesitated, and almost against her will looked the man fairly in the eyes, while her own blazed.  Once more she felt his dominance controlling her, felt as she did when, in what seemed the very long ago, he had spread his blanket for her upon the prairie earth.

She sat down.

Ben drew up another chair and sat facing her.  “Why,” he was leaning a bit forward, his elbow on his knee, “why, Florence Baker, have you done everything in your power to prevent my seeing you?  What have I done of late, what have I ever done, to deserve this treatment from you?”

The girl evaded his eyes.  “It is not usually considered necessary for a lady to give her reasons for not wishing to see a gentleman,” she parried.  The handkerchief in her lap was being rolled unconsciously into a tight little ball.  “The fact itself is sufficient.”

Ben’s free hand closed on the chair-arm with a mighty grip.  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I cannot agree with you.  There’s a certain amount of courtesy due between a woman and a man, as there is between man and man.  It is my right to repeat the question.”

The girl felt the cord drawing tighter, felt that in the end she would bend to his will.

“And should I refuse?” she asked.

“You won’t refuse.”

The girl’s eyes returned to his.  Even now she wondered that they did so, that try as she might she could not deny him.  His dominance over her was well-nigh absolute.  Yet she was not angry.  An instinct that she had felt before possessed her; the longing of the weaker for the stronger—­the impulse to give him what he wished.  Her whole womanhood went out to him, with an entire confidence that she would never give to another human being.  Naturally, he was her mate; naturally,—­but she was not natural.  She hesitated as she had done once before, a multitude of conflicting desires and ambitions seething in her brain.  If she could but eliminate the artificial in her nature, the desire for the empty things of the world, then—­But she could not yet give them up, and he could never be made to care for them with her.  She was nearer now to giving them up, to giving up everything for his sake, than when she had sat alone with him out on the prairie.  She realized this with an added complexity of emotion; but even yet, even yet—­

A minute passed in silence, a minute of which the girl was unconscious.  It was Ben Blair’s voice repeating his first question that recalled her.  This time she did not hesitate.

“I think you know the reason as well as I do.  If we were mere friends or acquaintances I would be only too glad to see you; but we are not, and never can be merely friends.  We have got to be either more or less.”  The voice, brave so far, dropped.  A mist came over the brown eyes.  “And we can’t be more,” she added.

The man’s grip on the chair-arm loosened.  He bent his face farther forward.  “Miss Baker,” he exclaimed.  “Florence!”