She kissed her father in silence again and again, and then she left the room; but the awful possibilities which his words suggested filled her with unutterable sorrow and loneliness, and, like a child that longs for warmth and cheer and comforting, she sank down on the rug in front of the big blazing fire, and her lips quivered in her great longing for Bobbie. She clasped her knees loosely with her hands, and the flames danced merrily up and down before her blurred eyes. The corners of the room were lost in shadows, and the flicker of the firelight played upon the walls. It would be such a relief to give way and have a good cry. She bit her lip to keep it back; and then she heard a little noise, and somebody had his arms about her and was down on his knees beside her, and outside she could hear Sallie Tom snorting, and Bobbie was telling her, almost out of breath, that he had ridden like the wind all day and all night just to spend a few hours with her and why didn’t she speak to him and tell him she was glad to see him? And all she could do at first was to cling to him, and let all the pent-up feeling and anxiety of the months past come out between the laughter and tears; and Bobbie understood it all, and soothed and quieted her as only he could do, and in a little while she was her own brave self, and was making him answer a dozen questions at once. She might have kept it up indefinitely had he not told her he was starving, and that sent her flying for Sallie Tom. It promised to be such a happy Christmas, after all. The knowledge that this brief return of other days could last but a short while made every moment precious, and such old-time doings as Bobbie insisted upon keeping up made them forget for a few hours at least, the serious outlook for the future. It was just before dinner on Christmas Day that Bobbie came to Dorothy with a face full of intensely repressed feeling. She was standing by the big window in the library watching the snow, now fast falling and thickly covering the ground, and he went up to her and took both of her hands in his. “Dorothy,” he said quietly, “has your father said anything to you to-day about our marriage?” “Not a word,” she answered, turning quickly and searching his face for the meaning of the new light there. “We must not worry him about it, Bobbie; he has had so much sorrow in his life that I dare not ask him to give me entirely to you. We can afford to wait.” “But if he says he wishes it, now, to-day, would you be willing?” He drew her down on the sofa by him. “I have just had a long talk with your father,” he continued, “and he told me that he would like us to be married at once, while he is at home and we are all together.” He almost crushed her hands in his as he waited her answer, controlling by a great effort, his old boyish and imperious impatience.