The Last Woman

"You have forgotten one thing, Mr. Morton; you have forgotten that I used the words, 'a willing party.'" She spoke calmly, half-smiling; but he was still insistent.

"Did you mean by their use that I am to understand that the circumstance meets with your entire approval?" he asked, slowly and with distinctness. A heavy frown was gathering on his brows.

"Yes; quite so."

"Do you love the man who is the other party to the--er--business transaction?" This time, he turned his head and looked squarely at her, gazed with his serious hazel eyes, deep into her darker ones--gazed searchingly and longingly.

"You have no right to ask me such a question as that," she told him.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Langdon." He turned his eyes to the front again; "but I think I have a distinct right to do so, and I don't believe it is your privilege to deny it. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. Please, don't interrupt me now, for I must say the few words I have in mind. I'll not look at you. The others won't hear me. By reason of my great love for you, even though there is no response in your heart for me, I certainly have the right to ask that question; and, also, I believe I have the right to demand an answer. If you love that other man, and if you will tell me that you do, I shall have nothing more to say; but if you do not love him, you shall not be his wife so long as I have my two hands and can remember how to hold a gun." It sounded theatrical, but he did not mean it so; and a "gun" and its use, was the strongest form of expression he could think of, at that moment. It had formed the court of last resort throughout his youth in the great West, and just now he felt that the expression fitted the present case admirably. What reply Patricia might have made to this characteristic statement by the young Montana ranchman will never be known, for at that instant they were interrupted by the other passengers of the car, who sought to draw Patricia into conversation with them.

She accepted the interruption gratefully as well as gracefully; it offered an easy escape from a trying situation, and it was not until the car was drawn up in front of the door of her own home and she was about to leave it that she spoke again with Morton, save in a general way. Now, he leaned quickly nearer to her and said, in a tone so low that the others could not hear: "I shall call upon you to-morrow evening--Sunday--if I may." Then he laughed and, with narrowed eyelids, added: "I'll come to the house whether I may or not. But you will receive me, won't you? Say that you will!" And Patricia nodded brightly, in reply, as she crossed the pavement toward the front steps of her father's princely mansion. At the door, she paused and looked after the car as it rolled up the avenue; and, with a half-smile of troubled perplexity, she murmured: "I wish, now, that I had not given my word to that 'business transaction.' Richard Morton might have offered a better solution of my problem. Only, it would have been unfair--and cruel; and I have never been either the one, or the other; never, yet!" Then, she passed into the house.