“I never did, dear love,” he said. “Though all the world wax colder, Though all the songs be sung. In dreams doth he--” “Ah, but you did. You tried. How could you even try!” “I never did. Not really. Not for a moment. Not even when I thought you had married some one else.” She moved in his arms to hide her eyes against his face. “You must have known that I never could,” she murmured. “Don’t you see,” he pursued eagerly, “that if I had really given you up, I should have given up the paper, the fight, everything? Don’t you see that, love?” “Yes; that is true,” she assented sweetly. “That must be true. Though perhaps you did not know it.... Ah, Jem, but I have wearied for you!” “When’s the very earliest you can marry me, dearest?” he asked. She looked up at him with her level and fearless eyes. “Any time, Jem.” “I’m asking a lot of you,” he said, his eager face clouding for the moment. “It is n’t all plain sailing yet; and there won’t be so much to live on even here. If we go to Washington you’ll find it doubly hard, I’m afraid.” “But I have my own money, Jem. And what is this about Washington?” “Oh!” said he casually; “they want to nominate me for the Senate, against Mart Embree.” “Jem! You will take it?” “If my liege lady approves.” “Of course she approves. It is wonderful. How could you keep it to yourself! Why did you not tell me the instant you came?” “Well, you see, I was intent on other matters,” said Jem, looking down into the flushed and adorable face, which flushed the more adorably at his words. He bent to her. “Dearest of my heart,” he said passionately, “what does it all matter in comparison with you!” ***** Stepping gloriously from rose-tipped cloud to rose-tipped cloud as youth may do when winged with happiness and love, Jeremy, on his way office-ward, presently found himself at the Inter-Urban terminal being accosted by a man who said: “If you are deaf, I can make signs.” “I beg your pardon,” apologized Jeremy hastily. “Were you speaking to me?” “Only three times,” said the stranger. “So far,” he added. Thus recalled from his castle-building the editor contemplated his interceptor. The man was a stranger in town. He carried a small, nondescript bag. He looked like a country minister on a week-day, or a prosperous plumber off the job, or a middle-aged clerk on an errand, or any one of a hundred other everyday individuals. In fact he was in face, figure, dress, and manner, the most commonplace, humdrum, unremarkable, completely average individual that Jeremy had ever encountered. He might have posed as the composite photograph of a convention of ten thousand Average Citizens. “I was asking you: do you know this city,” he was saying patiently. Now Jeremy possessed a singularly retentive visual memory. This memory had suddenly started working with a jar. “I do,” he said. “Do I know you?” “You do not,” said the man.