“Well, my darling,” he said, as he drew her head down on to his breast; “you don’t ask me if everything is ready.” “With a person of your promptitude and energy such a question is superfluous,” she returned, smiling up at him from the safe shelter which would be hers by divine right on the morrow. “I suppose you are dreadfully miserable?” he said softly. “Dreadfully,” she answered, longing to torment him a little, and yet feeling as if she could not. “How do I look?” “More beautiful than ever,” he answered rapturously. “Surely my eyes are red with crying.” He bent down so anxiously to examine them, that she laughed outright. “Don’t be a goose!” she added sweetly. “I wouldn’t marry you if they were.” “You are such a will-o’-the-wisp, Gwen. I sha’n’t feel safe until eleven o’clock to-morrow, and so I tell you fairly.” “But you are not obliged to be safe then,” she retorted saucily. “Wives do run away from their husbands occasionally.” “If you ever should, as you value your life, go alone,” he answered, with sudden fierceness; and then he cooled down as quickly, and said he had not forgotten her old tricks, “there was nothing she loved better than to tease.” “Yes; but what did you mean about my going alone?” she asked, so simply that he felt ashamed to have doubted this innocent child, even for a moment, and hastened to change the subject by speaking of his arrangements for her comfort on the morrow. “Now, Lawrence,” she said at last, “I am not going to be carried about like a piece of rare china, in cotton wool. I am not the least delicate, and I should enjoy roughing it beyond measure, on your arm. Do let us travel sensibly, and mix with people as we go along. I want variety--even adventure--and I mean to dine at the tables d’hôte, instead of in solitary state in our own salon.” “Under those circumstances you are likely to have the kind of adventure you will hardly care for,” he answered gravely. “Not under your protection? With that big mustache of yours you look quite terrible, I assure you; and I often think I should be dreadfully afraid of you if I cared for you less.” “And yet ‘perfect love casteth out fear,’ Gwen.” “Exactly; I am not afraid of you now, excepting so far as is proper and expedient under the circumstances.” He looked a little hurt. “It can’t be proper and expedient in the slightest degree under any circumstances.” “Well, I mean I should be afraid to flirt.” “Surely you would find a better reason than that for refraining.” “Oh, dear, you are so severely literal, Lawrence!” “‘I must speak by the card or equivocation will undo me,’ as Shakespeare says somewhere.” And then she pulled down his head, and whispered in his ear so softly: “You dear old goose! Haven’t you found out yet that I love you?”