Burned Bridges

"I'm sorry that you and Tommy fought," she said constrainedly. "I didn't

know until this morning. It was cowardly of me to run away. But it was

foolish to fight. It didn't occur to me that you two would. I suppose

you wonder what brought me here. I was worried for fear you had been

hurt. I saw Tommy, but he wouldn't talk."

"I daresay I'm not a pretty object to look at," Thompson admitted. "But

I'm really not much the worse."

"No. I can see that," she said. "Tommy is very quick and very strong--I

was a little afraid."

The contrition, the hint of pity in her voice stirred up the queer

personal pride he had lately acquired.

"I don't suppose Ashe has any monopoly of strength and quickness," he

remarked. "That--but there, I don't want to talk about that."

He came over close beside her and looked down with all his troubled

heart in his clear blue eyes--so that the girl turned her gaze away and

her fingers wove nervously together.

"My dear," the unaccustomed phrase broke abruptly, with a fierce

tenderness, from his lips. "I love you--which I think you know without

my saying so. I want you. Will you marry me? I--"

Sophie warded off the impetuous outstretching of his arms and sprang to

her feet, facing him with all the delicate color gone out of her cheeks,

a sudden heave to her breast. She shook her head. "No," she said. "I

won't penalize myself to that extent--nor you. I won't bind myself by

any such promise. I won't even admit that I might."

He caught her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.

"Yesterday," he said hoarsely, "you let me kiss you--your lips burned

me--you rested your head against me as if it belonged there. What sort

of a woman are you? Sophie! Sophie!"

"I know," she returned. "But yesterday was yesterday. This is another

day. Yesterday--oh, you wouldn't understand if I told you. Yesterday I

was bursting with happiness, like a bird in the spring. I like you, big

man with the freckled face. You came down here and stood beside me and

smiled at me. And--and that's all--a minute's madness. We can't marry on

that. I can't. I won't."

His fingers tightened on the rounded arms. He shook her again with a

restrained savagery. If he hurt her she did not flinch, nor did her gray

eyes, cloudy now and wistful, waver before the passionate fire in his.

"Sophie," he went on, "you don't know what this means to me. Don't you

care a little?"

"Yes," she answered slowly. "Perhaps more than a little. I'm made that

way, I suppose. It isn't hard for me to love. But one doesn't--"

"Then why," he demanded, "why refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care

in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy.

I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I

first saw you. You say you care--yet you won't even think of marrying

me. I can't understand that at all. Why?"