"And you're too stupid to live," cried Elsie, going into a great excitement. "Don't you know a woman can say one thing and mean another?" "Yes," said Tom, with more energy, "I do know that. I know it too well." "Great Mr. Wisdom!" said she mockingly. "Then can't you understand--don't you see?" He looked at her in bewildered surprise. She was smiling tenderly in his face. "Elsie!" he cried. She let her hands fall in his. "I don't want you to go," she whispered, "never--never!" "You love me--you will marry me?" She did not speak, but she made no resistance when Tom caught her to his heart and rained kisses on her face, utterly bewildered and unable to comprehend anything except that happiness had descended upon his long night at length. But Elsie raised herself, pushed him off and said, with a dash of her old wickedness: "I'll tease you to death, Tom!" "I can't believe it!" he exclaimed. "Oh, say it once--say 'I love you!'" "I do love you, Tom--there!" In an instant she flashed up again, while he was covering her hands with kisses, crying: "My little Elsie! My own at last!" "No more sentiment," said she. "Let's be reasonable, Tom; the catastrophe has reached a climax." But it was a long time before Tom Fuller could regain composure enough to talk at all coherently, or in what Elsie termed a sensible manner. "It's so sudden," he said. "And to have so much happiness just when I thought the last rope was going out of my hand! Why, I feel like the fellow who clung all night to the side of a precipice, expecting every moment to be dashed down a thousand feet, and when daylight came found he had hung within a foot of the ground all the while!" "The comparison is apt and delicious," said Elsie, laughing. "And you love me! Only say it again, Elsie--just once!" "I won't!" said she. "But I'll box your ears if you don't stop behaving like a crazy man." Tom caught Elsie up in his arms and ran twice with her across the floor, paying no more attention to her cries and struggles than if she had been a baby. "That's for punishment!" said Tom. "Let me down! Please let me down!" pleaded Elsie. "I know you'll drop me! Oh, you hurt me, Tom!" Tom placed her on the sofa and seated himself by her side. But she started away and ran upstairs, sending back a laugh of defiance. CHAPTER XL. TWO FACES IN THE GLASS. When Elsie entered her boudoir, flushed with laughter and breathless with running, she threw herself on the azure couch, and gathering her ringlets in a mass between her hand and the warm cheek under which it was thrust, fell into a deeper train of thought than was usual to her.