“That is not what I was thinking of.  As a woman you have sacred rights, and I should despise myself if I tried to buy you with kindness, or take advantage of your gratitude.  I’ll admit, too, since we are to have no dark corners in this talk, that I would rather be loved as I know you can love.  I’d rather have an honest friendship than a forced affection, even though the force was only in the girl’s will and wishes.  I was reading Maud Muller the other night, and no woman shall ever say of her life’s happiness, that but for me ‘it might have been.’”

“I don’t think any woman could ever say that of you.”

“Mildred, you showed me your heart last night, and it has a will stronger than your will, and it shall have its way.”

The girl again sighed.  “Roger,” she said, “one reason why I so shrank from you in the past was that you read my thoughts.  You have more than a woman’s intuition.”

“No,” he said, laughing a little grimly, “I’m not a bit feminine in my nature.  My explanation may seem absurd to you, but it’s true, I think.  I am exceedingly fond of hunting, and I so trained my eyes that if a leaf stirred or a bird moved a wing I saw it.  When you waked me up, and I determined to seek my fortunes out in the world, I carried with me the same quickness of eye.  I do not let much that is to be seen escape me, and on a face like yours thoughts usually leave some trace.”

“You didn’t learn to be a gentleman, in the best sense of the word, in the woods,” she said, with a smile.

“No, you and your mother taught me that, and I may add, your father, for when I first saw him he had the perfection of manners.”  He might also have referred to Vinton Arnold, whom he had studied so carefully, but he could not bring himself to speak of one whom in his heart he knew to be the chief barrier between them, for he was well aware that it was Mildred’s involuntary fidelity to her first love that made his suit so dubious.  At his reference to her father Mildred’s eyes had filled at once, and he continued gently, “We understand each other now, do we not?  You won’t be afraid of me any more, and will let me help you all to brighter days?”

She put both of her hands in his, and said earnestly, “No, I will never be afraid of you again, but I only half understand you yet, for I did not know that there was a man in the world so noble, so generous, so honest.  You have banished every trace of constraint, and I’ll do everything you say.”

There was a look of almost boyish pleasure on his face as she spoke, and in imitation of the heroes of the interminable old-time romances that once had formed the larger part of his reading, he was about to raise her hand to his lips when she snatched it away, and as if mastered by an impulse not to be controlled, put her arms around his neck and kissed him, then burst into tears with her head upon his shoulder.

He trembled a moment, and said, in low tones, “God bless you, Millie.”  Then he gently placed her in her chair.  “You mustn’t do that again,” he said gravely.  “With you it was but a grateful sisterly impulse, but if I were Samson I’d not be strong enough—­well, you understand me.  I don’t want to give the lie to all I’ve said.”