Most tenderly he raised that little dark and fluttering hand to his lips, most gently he spoke as he said— “Now, my Hagar, tell me why do you insist upon this delay?” “Not insist, oh! not insist, Raymond—_plead_—I plead this delay—your love make me happy? oh! yes, _so_ happy I am afraid to stir for fear of disturbing it. I feel like a dreamer who has fallen asleep in foreign lands, and dreams that he is standing in his own garden—afraid to stir lest I wake up—not yet, dear Raymond—do not let us wake yet, do not break this dream, dispel this illusion, spoil this love yet!” “‘Spoil this love,’ why what do you mean by that, Hagar?” “I mean that we are so happy as we are, Raymond—now that I have partly tamed my wild heart to your gentle hand—now that I no longer grieve or wound you, or ride steeplechases, or shock the neighborhood into electric life by some galvanic feat of desperation; now that I am winning ‘golden opinions from all sorts of people,’ and no longer mortifying you—why we are so happy, this is such a fairy-land, dream-like happiness. Think, we are under the same roof, sit daily at the same table, ride to church together every Sunday, visit together, read together, ramble together, my twin-brother,” said she, suddenly yielding herself to his embrace with affectionate abandonment. “So we are _so_ happy! alas! don’t spoil it, don’t let us become a humdrum Mr. and Mrs. Withers yet—a tobacco-planting, corn-growing, butter-churning Mr. and Mrs. Withers! don’t! the very idea ‘withers’ my heart,” and the wild girl, wild still! laughed like the explosion of a squib. Raymond folded his long fair hands together and fell into thought; at last he said: “Hagar, I have always heard, read, and dreamed much about the _confiding_ love of woman, but I see little of it in you; how is this, Hagar?”