LITMIR.BIZ

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she said with a pretense of annoyance.

      He laughed as he came around the edge of the rock and sat near her. "Was you really tryin' to hide?" he questioned. "Because if you was," he continued, "you hadn't ought to have got up on this hill—where I could see you without even lookin' for you."

      "But of course you were not looking for me," she observed quietly.

      He caught her gaze and held it—steadily. "I reckon I was lookin' for you," he said.

      "Why—why," she returned, suddenly fearful that something had happened to Ben—"is anything wrong?"

      He smiled. "Nothin' is wrong," he returned. "But I wanted to talk to you, an' I expected to find you here."

      There was a gentleness in his voice that she had not heard before, and a quiet significance to his words that made her eyes droop away from his with slight confusion. She replied without looking at him.

      "But I came here to write," she said.

      He gravely considered her, drawing one foot up on the rock and clasping his hands about the knee. "I've thought a lot about that book," he declared with a trace of embarrassment, "since you told me that you was goin' to put real men an' women in it. I expect you've made them do the things that you've wanted them to do an' made them say what you wanted them to say. That part is right an' proper—there wouldn't be any sense of anyone writin' a book unless they could put into it what they thought was right. But what's been botherin' me is this; how can you tell whether the things you've made them say is what they would have said if they'd had any chance to talk? An' how can you tell what their feelin's would be when you set them doin' somethin'?"

      She laughed. "That is a prerogative which the writer assumes without question," she returned. "The author of a novel makes his characters think and act as the author himself imagines he would act in the same circumstances."

      He looked at her with amused eyes. "That's just what I was tryin' to get at," he said. "You've put me into your book, an' you've made me do an' say things out of your mind. But you don't know for sure whether I would have done an' said things just like you've wrote them. Mebbe if I would have had somethin' to say I wouldn't have done things your way at all."

      "I am sure you would," she returned positively.

      "Well, now," he returned smiling, "you're speakin' as though you was pretty certain about it. You must have wrote a whole lot of the story."

      "It is two-thirds finished," she returned with a trace of satisfaction in her voice which did not escape him.

      "An' you've got all your characters doin' an' thinkin' things that you think they ought to do?" His eyes gleamed craftily. "You got a man an' a girl in it?"

      "Of course."

      "An' they're goin' to love one another?"

      "No other outcome is popular with novel readers," she returned.

      He rocked back and forth, his eyes languidly surveying the rim of hills in the distance.

      "I expect that outcome is popular in real life too," he observed. "Nobody ever hears about it when it turns out some other way."

      "I expect love is always a popular subject," she returned smiling.

      His eyes were still languid, his gaze still on the rim of distant hills.

      "You got any love talk in there—between the man an' the girl?" he questioned.

      "Of course."

      "That's mighty interestin'," he returned. "I expect they do a good bit of mushin'?"

      "They do not talk extravagantly," she defended.

      "Then I expect it must be pretty good," he returned. "I don't like mushy love stories." And now he turned and looked fairly at her. "Of course," he said slyly, "I don't know whether it's necessary or not, but I've been thinkin' that to write a good love story the writer ought to be in love. Whoever was writin' would know more about how it feels to be in love."

      She admired the cleverness with which he had led her up to this point, but she was not to be trapped. She met his eyes fairly.

      "I am sure it is not necessary for the writer to be in love," she said quietly but positively. "I flatter myself that my love scenes are rather real, and I have not found it necessary to love anyone."

      This reply crippled him instantly. "Well, now," he said, eyeing her, she thought, a bit reproachfully, "that comes pretty near stumpin' me. But," he added, a subtle expression coming again into his eyes, "you say you've got only two-thirds finished. Mebbe you'll be in love before you get it all done. An' then mebbe you'll find that you didn't get it right an' have to do it all over again. That would sure be too bad, when you could have got in love an' wrote it real in the first place."

      "I don't think that I shall fall in love," she said laughing.

      He looked quickly at her, suddenly grave. "I wouldn't want to think you meant that," he said.

      "Why?" she questioned in a low voice, her laughter subdued by his earnestness.

      "Why," he said steadily, as though stating a perfectly plain fact, "I've thought right along that you liked me. Of course I ain't been fool enough to think that you loved me"—and now he reddened a little—, "but I don't deny that I've hoped that you would."

      "Oh, dear!" she laughed; "and so you have planned it all out! And I was hoping that you would not prove so deep as that. You know," she went on, "you promised me a long while ago that you would not fall in love with me."

      "I don't reckon that I said that," he returned. "I told you that I wasn't goin' to get fresh. I reckon I ain't fresh now. But I expect I couldn't help lovin' you—I've done that since the first day."

      She could not stop the blushes—they would come. And so would that thrilling, breathless exultation. No man had ever talked to her like this; no man had ever made her feel quite as she felt at this moment. She turned a crimson face to him.

      "But you hadn't any right to love me," she declared, feeling sure that she had been unable to make him understand that she meant to rebuke him. Evidently he did not understand that she meant to do that, for he unclasped his hand from his knee and came closer to her, standing at the edge of the rock, one hand resting upon it.

      "Of course I didn't have any right," he said gravely, "but I loved you just the same. There's been some things in my life that I couldn't help doin'. Lovin' you is one. I expect that you'll think I'm pretty fresh, but I've been thinkin' a whole lot about you an' I've got to tell you. You ain't like the women I've been used to. An' I reckon I ain't just the kind of man you've been acquainted with all your life. You've been used to seein' men who was all slicked up an' clever. I expect them kind of men appeal to any woman. I ain't claimin' to be none of them clever kind, but I've been around quite a little an' I ain't never done anything that I'm ashamed of. I can't offer you a heap, but if you——"

      She had looked up quickly, her cheeks burning.

      "Please don't," she pleaded, rising and placing a hand on his arm, gripping it tightly. "I have known for a long time, but I—I wanted to be sure." He could not suspect that she had only just now begun to realize that she was in danger of yielding to him and that the knowledge frightened her.

      "You wanted to be sure?" he questioned, his face clouding. "What is it that you wanted to be sure of?"

      "Why," she returned, laughing to hide her embarrassment, "I wanted to be sure that you loved me!"

      "Well, you c'n be sure now," he said.

      "I believe I can," she laughed. "And," she continued, finding it difficult to pretend seriousness, "knowing what I do will make writing so much easier."

      His face clouded again. "I don't see what your writin' has got to do with it," he said.

      "You don't?" she demanded, her eyes widening with pretended surprise. "Why, don't you see that I wanted to be sure of your love so that I might be able to portray a real love scene in my story?"

      He

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