"If you mean," he said with dignity, "that I've asked the sweetest girl on earth to marry me, I have. And I'm the happiest man on the footstool, too. Good Heaven, George," he broke out, "if you knew the meaning of love! if you could for one second catch a glimpse of the beauty of her soul! Why, man of sordid clay that I was--creature of club and claret and turtle--like you----" "Drop it!" said Wayne somberly. "I can't help it, George. We were beasts--and _you_ are yet. But my base clay is transmuted, spiritualized; my soul is awake, traveling, toiling toward the upward heights where hers sits enthroned. When I think of what I was, and what you still are----" Wayne rose exasperated: "Do you think your soul is doing the only upward hustling?" he said hotly. Briggs, clasping his flowers to his breast, gazed out over them at Wayne. "You don't mean----" "Yes, I do," said Wayne. "I may be crazy, but I know something," with which paradox he turned on his heel and walked into the moonlit meadow toward that dim, white form moving through the dusk. "I wondered," she said, "whether you were coming," as he stepped through the long, fragrant grass to her side. "You might have wondered if I had not come," he answered. "Yes, that is true. This moonlight is too wonderful to miss," she added without a trace of self-consciousness. "It was for you I came." "Couldn't you find my sisters?" she asked innocently. He did not reply. Presently she stumbled over a hummock, recovered her poise without comment, and slipped her hand into his with unconscious confidence. "Do you know what I have been studying to-day?" she asked. "What?" "That curious phycomycetous fungus that produces resting-spores by the conjugation of two similar club-shaped hyphae, and in which conidia also occur. It's fascinating." After a silence he said: "What would you think of me if I told you that I do not comprehend a single word of what you have just told me?" "Don't you?" she asked, astonished. "No," he replied, dropping her hand. She wondered, vaguely distressed; and he went on presently: "As a plain matter of fact, I don't know much. It's an astonishing discovery for me, but it's a fact that I am not your mental, physical, or spiritual equal. In sheer, brute strength perhaps I am, and I am none too certain of that, either. But, and I say it to my shame, I can not follow you; I am inferior in education, in culture, in fine instinct, in mental development. You chatter in a dozen languages to your sisters: my French appals a Paris cabman; you play any instrument I ever heard of: the guitar is my limit, the fandango my repertoire. As for alert intelligence, artistic comprehension, ability to appreciate, I can not make the running with you; I am outclassed--hopelessly. Now, if this is all true--and I have spoken the wretched truth--_what_ can a man like me have to say for himself?"