Why, he had doubled his fortune, made fifteen millions, since the day she first came to work for him, and behold, any willingness to marry him she might have possessed had diminished as his money had increased.
"Gosh!" he muttered.
"If I clean up a hundred million on this land deal she won't even be on speaking terms with me."
But he could not smile the thing away.
It remained to baffle him, that enigmatic statement of hers that she could more easily have married the Elam Harnish fresh from the Klondike than the present Elam Harnish.
Well, he concluded, the thing to do was for him to become more like that old-time Daylight who had come down out of the North to try his luck at the bigger game.
But that was impossible.
He could not set back the flight of time.
Wishing wouldn't do it, and there was no other way.
He might as well wish himself a boy again.
Another satisfaction he cuddled to himself from their interview.
He had heard of stenographers before, who refused their employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately afterward.
But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing.
No matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness about her.
She was level headed.
But, also, he had been level-headed and was partly responsible for this.
He hadn't taken advantage of her in the office.
True, he had twice overstepped the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made a practice of it.
She knew she could trust him.
But in spite of all this he was confident that most young women would have been silly enough to resign a position with a man they had turned down.
And besides, after he had put it to her in the right light, she had not been silly over his sending her brother to Germany.
"Gee!" he concluded, as the car drew up before his hotel.
"If I'd only known it as I do now, I'd have popped the question the first day she came to work.
According to her say-so, that would have been the proper moment.
She likes me more and more, and the more she likes me the less she'd care to marry me!
Now what do you think of that?
She sure must be fooling."
CHAPTER XIX
Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight proposed to Dede.
As on the first time, he restrained himself until his hunger for her overwhelmed him and swept him away in his red automobile to Berkeley.
He left the machine several blocks away and proceeded to the house on foot.
But Dede was out, the landlady's daughter told him, and added, on second thought, that she was out walking in the hills. Furthermore, the young lady directed him where Dede's walk was most likely to extend.
Daylight obeyed the girl's instructions, and soon the street he followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the first steep slopes of the open hills.
The air was damp with the on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the rising wind proclaimed its imminence.
As far as he could see, there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy hills.
To the right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large, full-grown eucalyptus grove. Here all was noise and movement, the lofty, slender trunked trees swaying back and forth in the wind and clashing their branches together.
In the squalls, above all the minor noises of creaking and groaning, arose a deep thrumming note as of a mighty harp.
Knowing Dede as he did, Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere in this grove where the storm effects were so pronounced.
And find her he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest of the opposing slope where the gale smote its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the way Daylight proposed.
Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was as direct and gusty as the gale itself.
He had time neither for greeting nor apology. "It's the same old thing," he said.
"I want you and I've come for you.
You've just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think about it the more certain I am that you've got a Sneaking liking for me that's something more than just Ordinary liking.
And you don't dast say that it isn't; now dast you?"
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and he had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer, she felt a light but firmly insistent pressure as of his drawing her to him.
Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire for the moment stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew herself away, though permitting her hand still to remain in his.
"You sure ain't afraid of me?" he asked, with quick compunction.
"No."
She smiled woefully.