Gale found himself for a moment jealously regarding the youth and his enviable state of contentment and decision.
"Well, let's get at it," the younger man finally said.
"I suppose you'll want to interrupt and question me a heap, but I'll ask you to let me tell this story the way it comes to me, till I get it out, then we can go back and take up the queer stuff.

It runs back eighteen or twenty years, and, being as it's part of a hidden life, it isn't easy to tell.

You'll be the first one to hear it, and I reckon you're enough like other men to disbelieve--you're not old enough, and you haven't knocked around enough to learn that nothing is impossible, that nothing is strange enough to be unreasonable.

Likewise, you'll want to know what, all this has to do with you and Necia--yes, she told me about you and her, and that's why I'm here." He paused.

"You really think you love her, do you ?" Burrell removed his pipe and gazed at its coal impersonally.
"I love her so well, Mr.Gale, that nothing you can say will affect me.
I--I hesitated at first about asking her to be my wife, because--you'll appreciate the unusual--well, her unusual history.