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Claire shook her head a shade impatiently.

“It’s no use, Ivor. Why—why can’t we be friends? True, I haven’t a thing against you in the world, not a thing, not even”—she smiled gently—“the looks which you don’t seem to set much stock by. No, it isn’t anything like that. True it isn’t. I like you, but—— Here, you don’t get the things lying back of my fool head. Guess I’m my father’s daughter. You knew him for what he was. He was a gambler. And maybe, in a way, I’m a gambler, too. I want life with all its chances. I want to reach out an’ hug it all. I want to take every chance coming, and do something, and be something in the game of it all. I don’t want to marry. Sure not yet. I don’t want to share in any man’s home, and—and grow on like a cabbage. There’s too much of the big adventure in life for me to miss it all. Maybe I’ll get sort of disillusioned later—maybe. I can’t help that. But I mean to take a hand in the game meanwhile.”

There was such a ring of final resolution in the girl’s smiling denial that the man realised his momentary defeat. So he offered no further protest. He made no attempt at argument. He shrugged his great shoulders, and the happy twinkle returned to his eyes.