After dinner father took them all out in the garden to look at some new hotbeds he was having made and Julius and Marcella went into the parlor. I stayed in the hall by the door, not being wanted in the parlor and not admiring hotbeds much. They didn't sit down, but went over and stood by the piano and all of a sudden Marcella said nervous-like: "Why don't you read your telegram? It might contain good news." "It _is_ good news, I feel sure," he told her, "and I wanted you to be the first one to know it--that's the reason I didn't mention it at the table." She said well hurry up and tell her, so he did. He said the day he saw her leaning against the cedar tree he thought she was so beautiful that he went straight back to the bungalow and made a picture of her like she was then and sent it to a large magazine up North which had promised to give five thousand dollars to the person which sent them the best picture by Christmas, and he believed the telegram was to say that his was it. Marcella told him well, he had a high opinion of his work to take it for granted that it had won such a prize as _that_. "Not at all," he said, catching her hand in his, "for it was a picture of _you_." This sounded so loving that I wasn't prepared for what came next. I heard them tear open the telegram and Marcella said, "_Good-ness_;" and he said, "Well, I'll be--I wasn't looking for this!" and it made me so interested that before I knew it I was in the parlor, though so easy and it nearly dark that I don't think they saw me. As near as I could make out the telegram told Julius they thought his picture was so good they were not only going to give him the prize like they promised, but wanted to engage him to draw for them all the next year and how much salary would he do it for. "Why, you can have your green library and brass jardinieres _now_," Marcella said, still holding hands and her voice like it was about to cry. He just looked at her and looked a long time without saying a word. Finally he put both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eyes. "I can have nothing without you," he said in the most devoted voice I ever heard. "It is your beauty that has made my picture succeed. If I amount to anything you will have to come with me--will you?" "You want me for your model?" she asked very quivery and making out like she didn't know what he was driving at, but she put her hands up on his shoulders too, which was enough to give her away. "True, I can not draw without you for my model," he said so grand and sweet that it made you feel very strange listening to it, "but I can not _live_ without you for my wife." This won her. It was enough to win _anybody_, coming from an artist, and good looking at that. CHAPTER VII