“I am here because I would be anything, do anything that a man could be and do to win your love.  A year ago, when I told you of my love, and asked you to be my wife, and, like the silly, pampered, petted fool that I was, thought that my wealth and the life that I offered could count for anything with a woman like you, you laughed at me.  You told me that if ever you married, you would wed a man, not a fortune nor a social position.  You made me see myself as I was—­a useless idler, a dummy for the tailors, a superficial chatterer of pretty nothings to vain and shallow women; you told me that I possessed not one manly trait of character that could compel the genuine love of an honest woman.  You let me see the truth, that my proposal to you was almost an insult.  You made me understand that your very friendship for me was such a friendship as you might have with an amusing and irresponsible boy, or a spoiled child.  You could not even consider my love for you seriously, as a woman like you must consider the love of a strong man.  And you were right, Helen.  But, dear, it was for me a bitter, bitter lesson.  I went from you, ashamed to look men in the face.  I felt myself guilty—­a pitifully weak and cowardly thing, with no right to exist.  In my humiliation, I ran from all who knew me—­I came out here to escape from the life that had made me what I was—­that had robbed me of my manhood.  And here, by chance, in the contests at the celebration in Prescott, I saw a man—­a cowboy—­who possessed everything that I lacked, and for the lack of which you had laughed at me.  And then alone one night I faced myself and fought it out.  I knew that you were right, Helen, but it was not easy to give up the habits and luxury to which all my life I had been accustomed.  It was not easy, I say, but my love for you made it a glorious thing to do; and I hoped and believed that if I proved myself a man, I could go back to you, in the strength of my manhood, and you would listen to me.  And so, penniless and a stranger, under an assumed name, I sought useful, necessary work that called for the highest quality of manhood.  And I have won, Helen; I know that I have won.  To-day Patches, the cowboy, can look any man in the face.  He can take his place and hold his own among men of any class anywhere.  I have regained that of which the circumstances of birth and inheritance and training robbed me.  I have won the right of a man to come to you again.  I claim that right now, Helen.  I tell you again that I love you.  I love you as—­”

“Larry!  Larry!” she cried, springing to her feet, and drawing away from him, as though suddenly awakened from some strange spell.  “Larry, you must not!  What do you mean?  How can you say such things to me?”

He answered her with reckless passion.  “I say such things because I am a man, and because you are the woman I love and want; because—­”

She cried out again in protest.  “Oh, stop, stop!  Please stop!  Don’t you know?”