The argument was more effective than he knew. Jennie became aware that even this little bit of drama had put home conditions and Wray’s cruelty a perceptible distance behind her. It was sheer terror at being thrown on them again that induced her to walk on, tacitly permitting him to stay with her. "You can’t be saved from one kind of trouble by getting into another," she argued, ungraciously. "The fire’s not much of a relief from the frying pan." "It is if it doesn’t burn you—if it only warms and comforts you and makes it easier to live." "This fire would burn me—to death." "Oh no, it wouldn’t; because I’d be there. I’d be the stoker, to see that it was kept in the furnace. The furnace in the house, Jennie, is like the heart in the body—something out of sight, but hot and glowing, and cheering everybody up." If she could have listened to such words from Hubert Wray, she thought, how enraptured she would have been. "Did you ever hear the story of the guy who gave us fire in the first place?" Bob continued, as she walked on and said nothing. "You know we didn’t have any fire on earth—at least, that’s the tune to which the rig is sung. The gods had fire in heaven, but men had to shiver." "Why didn’t they freeze to death?’’ "They did—in a parable way. It wasn’t life they lived; it was a great big creeping horror on the edge of nothing. Then this old bird—I forget his name—went up to heaven—" "How did he do that?" "The story doesn’t tell; but up he went, stole the fire, and brought it down. After that, they were able to open the ball we call ’civilization,’ which gives every one a good time." "Oh, does it? Much you know!" "I know this much, Jennie—that I could give you a good time if you’d let me." "You couldn’t give me the good time I want." "But I could make you want the good time I’d give you, which would come to the same thing. I imagine the folks on earth didn’t think much of the fire from heaven—beforehand; but once they’d got it, they knew what it meant to them. That’s the way you’d feel, Jennie, if you married me. You can’t begin to fancy now—" On coming in sight of a line of taxicabs drawn up before a hotel, he broke off to say, "Do you see those taxis, Jennie?" She replied that she did. "Well, one of them may mean a great deal to you and me." "Which one of them?" "Whichever one we get into." "Why should we get into it?" "Because"—he tapped the white box in his waistcoat pocket—"this little thing I’ve got in here wouldn’t do us any good without something else. We should have to go after it together." Her mystified expression told him that she was in the dark. "It’s something we should have to ask for, and to sign—Robert Bradley Collingham, bachelor, and Jane Scarborough Follett, spinster—I believe that’s the way it runs." "Oh!" The low ejaculation was just enough to show that she understood. "Why shouldn’t we, Jennie? It wouldn’t take half an hour to get there and back."