Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/91

 the last penny is cleared. At the rate I'm going, that will never happen in the course of my natural life."

"I know all of that. But I don't believe you'd stay, I don't believe Don Abrahan and all the powers he can command, could keep you here a minute longer than you wanted to stay."

"I am afraid I'm neither so brave nor so resourceful as you seem to do me the honor of believing," Henderson told her.

He wondered if her desire to know about him, to penetrate the mystery that she had clothed him with in her own romantic imagination, could be entirely her own, unprompted by some dictator who stood out of sight.

"I must go back," she said, rustling in the tree as if she were coming down. "I left my aunt asleep in a corner of the porch; she will be frantic if she wakes and does not see me near. Please walk away and look at the hill again, and I will come down."

"Give me your hand; let me help you, Miss Sprague. Make me happy by standing in the moonlight just one moment, so I may see and remember your face."

"You're talking like a native," she said, between disappointment and scorn. "I ran away from them. I risked everything, just for a minute's speech with a natural man. Yov're letting the insincerities of our tinkling little language get hold of your tongue, Mr. Gabriel Henderson."