“Then you do not love me,” she said, purely as a coercive measure.

“I do, I do—­you know that I do; but I could not take it,” said Ralph, piteously.

“Well, good-bye, then,” said Winsome, without holding out her hand, and turning away.

“You do not mean it; Winsome, you cannot be cruel, after all.  Come back and sit down.  We shall talk about it, and you will see—­”

Winsome paused and looked at him, standing so piteously.  She says now that she really meant to go away, but she smiles when she says it, as if she did not quite believe the statement herself.  But something—­perhaps the look in his eyes, and the thought that, like herself, he had never known a mother—­made her turn.  Going back, she took his hand and laid it against her cheek.

“Ralph,” she said, “listen to me; if I needed help and had none I should not be proud; I would not quarrel with you when you offered to help me.  No, I would even ask you for it!  But then I love you.”  It was hardly fair.  Winsome acknowledges as much herself; but then a woman has no weapons but her wit and her beauty—­which is, seeing the use she can make of these two, on the whole rather fortunate than otherwise.

Ralph looked eager and a little frightened.

“Would you do that really?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course I should!” replied Winsome, a little indignantly.

Ralph took her in his arms, and in such a masterful way, that first she was frightened and then she was glad.  It is good to feel weak in the arms of a strong man who loves you.  God made it so when he made all things well.

“My lassie!” said Ralph for all comment.

Then fell a silence so prolonged that a shy squirrel in the boughs overhead resumed his researches upon the tassels and young shoots of the pine-tops, throwing down the debris in a contemptuous manner upon Winsome and Ralph, who stood below, listening to the beating of each other’s hearts.

Finally Winsome, without moving, produced apparently from regions unknown a long green silk purse with three silver rings round the middle.

As she put it into Ralph’s hand, something doubtful started again into his eyes, but Winsome looked so fierce in a moment, and so decidedly laid a finger on his lips, that perforce he was silent.

As soon as he had taken it, Winsome clapped her hands (as well as was at the time possible for her—­it seemed, indeed, altogether impossible to an outsider, yet it was done), and said: 

“You are not sorry, dear—­you are glad?” with interrogatively arched eyebrows.

“Yes,” said Ralph, “I am very glad.”  As indeed he might well be.

“You see,” said the wise young woman, “it is this way:  all that is my very own. I am your very own, so what is in the purse is your very own.”

Logic is great—­greatest when the logician is distractingly pretty; then, at least, it is sure to prevail—­unless, indeed, the opponent be blind, or another woman.  This is why they do not examine ladies orally in logic at the great colleges.