“I’ve learned one thing about you in this last minute,” he muttered.  “You can keep your head.”

“Why not?” There was a note of laughter in her voice.  “There needs to be one who keeps her head when the other loses his—­all because of a little winter moonlight.  What would the summer moonlight do to you, I wonder?”

“Roberta Gray”—­his voice was rough—­“the moonlight does it no more than the sunlight.  Whatever you think, I’m not that kind of fellow.  The day I saw you first you had just come in out of the rain.  You went back into it and I saw you go—­and wanted to go with you.  I’ve been wanting it ever since.”

They moved on in silence which lasted until they were within a quarter-mile of the bonfire, whose flashing light they could see above the banks which intervened.  Then Roberta spoke: 

“Mr. Kendrick”—­and her voice was low and rich with its kindest inflections—­“I don’t want you to think me careless or hard because I have treated what you have said to-night in a way that you don’t like.  I’m only trying to be honest with you.  I’m quite sure you didn’t mean to say it to me when you came to-night, and—­we all do and say things on a night like this that we should like to take back next day.  It’s quite true—­what I said—­that you hardly know me, and whatever it is that takes your fancy it can’t be the real Roberta Gray, because you don’t know her!”

“What you say is,” he returned, staring straight ahead of him, “that I can’t possibly know what you really are, at all; but you know so well what I am that you can tell me exactly what my own thoughts and feelings are.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean—­”

“That’s precisely what you do mean.  I’m so plainly labelled ‘worthless’ that you don’t have to stop to examine me.  You—­”

“I didn’t—­”

“I beg your pardon.  I can tell you exactly what you think of me:  A young fool who runs after the latest sensation, to drop it when he finds a newer one.  His head turned by every pretty girl—­to whom he says just the sort of thing he has said to you to-night.  Superficial and ordinary, incapable of serious thought on any of the subjects that interest you.  As for this business affair in Eastman—­that’s just a caprice, a game to be dropped when he tires of it.  Everything in life will be like that to him, including his very friends.  Come, now—­isn’t that what you’ve been thinking?  There’s no use denying it.  Nearly every time I’ve seen you you’ve said some little thing that has shown me your opinion of me.  I won’t say there haven’t been times in my life when I may have deserved it, but on my honour I don’t think I deserve it now.”

“Then I won’t think it,” said Roberta promptly, looking up.  “I truly don’t want to do you an injustice.  But you are so different from the other men I have known—­my brothers, my friends—­that I can hardly imagine your seeing things from my point of view—­”

“But you can see things from mine without any difficulty!”