"Oh, but that isn't fair," she cried.
"You give me the choice of lying to you and hurting you in order to protect myself by getting rid of you, or of throwing away my protection by telling you the truth, for then you, as you said yourself, would stay and urge."
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips tremulous, but she continued to look him frankly in the eyes.
Daylight smiled grimly with satisfaction.
"I'm real glad, Miss Mason, real glad for those words."
"But they won't serve you," she went on hastily. "They can't serve you.
I refuse to let them.
This is our last ride, and... here is the gate."
Ranging her mare alongside, she bent, slid the catch, and followed the opening gate.
"No; please, no," she said, as Daylight started to follow.
Humbly acquiescent, he pulled Bob back, and the gate swung shut between them.
But there was more to say, and she did not ride on.
"Listen, Miss Mason," he said, in a low voice that shook with sincerity;
"I want to assure you of one thing. I'm not just trying to fool around with you.
I like you, I want you, and I was never more in earnest in my life.
There's nothing wrong in my intentions or anything like that.
What I mean is strictly honorable—"
But the expression of her face made him stop.
She was angry, and she was laughing at the same time.
"The last thing you should have said," she cried.
"It's like a—a matrimonial bureau: intentions strictly honorable; object, matrimony.
But it's no more than I deserved.
This is what I suppose you call urging like Sam Scratch."
The tan had bleached out of Daylight's skin since the time he came to live under city roofs, so that the flush of blood showed readily as it crept up his neck past the collar and overspread his face.
Nor in his exceeding discomfort did he dream that she was looking upon him at that moment with more kindness than at any time that day.
It was not in her experience to behold big grown-up men who blushed like boys, and already she repented the sharpness into which she had been surprised.
"Now, look here, Miss Mason," he began, slowly and stumblingly at first, but accelerating into a rapidity of utterance that was almost incoherent;
"I'm a rough sort of a man, I know that, and I know I don't know much of anything.
I've never had any training in nice things.
I've never made love before, and I've never been in love before either—and I don't know how to go about it any more than a thundering idiot.
What you want to do is get behind my tomfool words and get a feel of the man that's behind them.
That's me, and I mean all right, if I don't know how to go about it."
Dede Mason had quick, birdlike ways, almost flitting from mood to mood; and she was all contrition on the instant.
"Forgive me for laughing," she said across the gate. "It wasn't really laughter.
I was surprised off my guard, and hurt, too.
You see, Mr. Harnish, I've not been..."
She paused, in sudden fear of completing the thought into which her birdlike precipitancy had betrayed her.
"What you mean is that you've not been used to such sort of proposing," Daylight said; "a sort of on-the-run,
'Howdy, glad-to-make-your-acquaintance, won't-you-be-mine' proposition."
She nodded and broke into laughter, in which he joined, and which served to pass the awkwardness away.
He gathered heart at this, and went on in greater confidence, with cooler head and tongue.
"There, you see, you prove my case.
You've had experience in such matters.
I don't doubt you've had slathers of proposals.
Well, I haven't, and I'm like a fish out of water.
Besides, this ain't a proposal.
It's a peculiar situation, that's all, and I'm in a corner.
I've got enough plain horse-sense to know a man ain't supposed to argue marriage with a girl as a reason for getting acquainted with her.
And right there was where I was in the hole.
Number one, I can't get acquainted with you in the office.