“The right, you say?  What right?”

“To tell you that I love you.”

She drew a quick, quivering breath, the rich color surging into her cheeks, her gloved hands clasped across her heaving bosom as though to still the fierce throbbing of her heart.  An instant she stood as if palsied, trembling, from head to foot, although he could perceive nothing.  Her lips smiled.

“Oh, indeed,” she said archly, “and how very prettily you said it!  The only son of Colonel Winston, the wealthy banker of Denver, honors Miss Norvell, actress, and she, of course, feels highly grateful!”

“Beth, stop!” His voice was indignantly earnest.  “It is not that; you must know it is not that!”

“I only know it is supremely ridiculous,” she returned, more coldly; “yet if I did not believe you spoke with some degree of honesty I should deem your words a deliberate insult, and treat them accordingly.  As it is, I prefer regarding your speech merely as an evidence of temporary insanity.  Ned Winston making love to Beth Norvell!  Why, you do not even know my true name, the story of my life, or that I am in any way worthy of your mere friendship.  Love!  You love me, an actress in a fly-by-night company, a variety artist at the Gayety!  What would they say at home?”

“I know you.”

“Ah, but you do not in the least,” her voice grown steady and serious.  “That is the whole trouble.  You do not in the least know me.  I am not even what you imagine me to be.  I am a fraud, a cheat, a masquerader.  Know me!  Why, if you did, instead of speaking words of love you would despise; instead of seeking, you would run away.  Oh, let us end this farce forever; it is as painful to myself as to you.  Promise me, Ned Winston, that you will return to Denver.”

She tantalized, tempted him even while she thus openly renounced.  He struggled madly with an almost overmastering desire to burst forth in strenuous denial, to lay his whole life unreservedly at her feet.  Yet something within the girl’s resolute face steadied him, made him feel her decision as unchangeable.

“Beth—­you—­you will not listen?”

“No—­not to another word.”

“You do not believe me?”

He marked the quick restraining pressure of her lips, the tumultuous rise and fall of her breast.

“Yes, I believe you,” she admitted, almost wearily.  “You mean it—­now; but—­but it is impossible.  I wish you to go.”

An instant Winston stood looking straight into those dark, glowing eyes, and all his inherited strength of manhood came trooping back to aid him.  He comprehended in that moment of intense resolution that this woman had become the whole world to him.  That one fact never would change.  It came over him as a distinct revelation untinged by either despair or hope.  It was merely an unalterable truth, which he must henceforth face as fate willed.  He was of fighting blood, and the seeming obstacles in the way of success did not dismay; they merely served to inspire him to greater efforts.