“Don’t answer me now!” he said swiftly.  “I’ll wait—­give me a chance.  I can’t take no . . .  I won’t take it!” he went on masterfully.  “I love you!” Impetuously he slipped his strong young arms about her and kissed her on the mouth.

The previous moment she had been all softness and regret, but now, at the sudden passion in his voice, something within her recoiled violently, repudiating the claim his love had made upon her.

Sara was the last woman in the world to be taken by storm.  She was too individual, her sense of personal independence too strongly developed, for her ever to be swept off her feet by a passion to which her own heart offered no response.  Instead, it roused her to a definite consciousness of opposition, and she drew herself away from Tim’s eager arms with a decision there was no mistaking.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” she said quietly.  “But it’s no good pretending I’m in love with you.  I’m not.”

He looked at her with moody, dissatisfied eyes.

“I’ve spoken too soon,” he said.  “I should have waited.  Only I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”  He spoke uncertainly.  “I’ve had a feeling that if I let you go, you’ll meet some man down there, at Monkshaven, who’ll want to marry you . . .  And I shall lose you! . . .  Oh, Sara!  I don’t ask you to say you love me—­yet.  Say that you’ll marry me . . .  I’d teach you the rest—­you’d learn to love me.”

But that fierce, unpremeditated kiss—­the first lover’s kiss that she had known—­had endowed her with a sudden clarity of vision.

“No,” she answered steadily.  “I don’t know much about love, Tim, but I’m very sure it’s no use trying to manufacture it to order, and—­listen, Tim, dear,” the pain in his face making her suddenly all tenderness again—­“if I married you, and afterwards you couldn’t teach me as you think you could, we should only be wretched together.”

“I could never be wretched if you were my wife,” he answered doggedly.  “I’ve love enough for two.”

She shook her head.

“No, Tim.  Don’t let’s spoil a good friendship by turning it into a one-sided love-affair.”

He smiled rather grimly.

“I’m afraid it’s too late to prevent that,” he said drily.  “But I won’t worry you any more now, dear.  Only—­I’m not going to accept your answer as final.”

“I wish you would,” she urged.

He looked at her curiously.  “No man who loves you, Sara, is going to give you up very easily,” he averred.  Then, after a moment:  “you’ll let me write to you sometimes?”

She nodded soberly.

“Yes—­but not love-letters, Tim.”

“No—­not love-letters.”

He lifted her hands and kissed first one and then the other.  Then, with his head well up and his shoulders squared, he went away.

But the sea-blue eyes that had been wont to look out on the world so gaily had suddenly lost their care-free bravery.  They were the eyes of a man who has looked for the first time into the radiant, sorrowful face of Love, and read therein all the possibilities—­the glory and the pain and the supreme happiness—­which Love holds.