"Prove what, Barney?"
"What I am."
"But that's always been plain, Barney; nothing—nothing we could possibly find could make you different."
"Lots of things could."
"Could anything make you think differently about me?"
"About you?" he repeated wonderingly and laughed in joy. "What do you mean?"
"Just what meant to me."
"But there couldn't be anything about yourself that could change you."
"Nor you, Barney."
He started closer to her, then controlled himself and jerked about and strode a few steps away, where he stood with his back toward her.
"Caring about a girl—love, Miss Carew," he said, still turned from her, "it was a thing I'd put off. It didn't seem to be for me. Not that I didn't have normal feelings; but even in Boyne, I said, any girl would want to know about me. They were very kind, you understand. I could go with them to dances, and they'd be nice to me—"
"Nice to you!" Ethel interrupted. "I should think they would be."
He half turned about, a warm flush passing over his face; at some memory, Ethel thought, of an occasion when some one might not have been so "nice."
"—but it was understood that no one could 'consider' Barney Loutrelle."
"Who understood it?"
"All of them—I," Barney said quietly.
She put her hand toward him impulsively. He had
