Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/274

 hind him, "more than I ever had in all life before."

He moved a little nearer her. "I don't mean from the medium; I mean from you—Miss—Ethel Carew. You're a strange girl; the finest and noblest in all the world," he added quickly. "From the first, in spite of how I told you about myself, you treated me as I never expected any girl of your kind could. Why even in Boyne, the girls couldn't help holding my—what wasn't known—against me! But you never did. You just made it good to yourself and to me! You turned against your own people, and you trusted me!"

"You, Barney? Why not? How could I help it?"

"Don't!" he warned swiftly. "I've got to thinking about you I never should. I know that perfectly well—"

"How do you think about me, Barney?"

"Think?" he repeated. "I don't think about you. I can't. I love—love—love you! There, I've said it!" He snatched his hands apart behind him and struck them together before him in his dismay.

"I—" she stopped.

"Oh, what, please?"

"I'm glad you did, Barney."

"Oh, you're so decent, Ethel Carew! You're so—so binisika decent. That's Indian; it means of you, yourself, through and through, because it's you and for no other reason. That's the way this is, Miss Carew; and I know it. Because you're you, you picked me up and went to making me believe in myself and that I was right in thinking of myself as something like you, whereas you should—you should have doubted me at once, like every one else, and questioned me and made me prove—"