He smoothed her hair as he would have soothed a child, and said decisively--yet with a big tenderness: "And you shan't do any more of it!" He felt his heart breaking with the love he felt for her. "Kiss me--Honey!" he said softly. She winced at the old sweet term of endearment, then with a sharp intake of breath she raised her lips to his. He was sure that no other woman's kiss could so draw the soul out of him. Beth seemed only a shadow--like someone long dead whose personality is recalled with an effort. This was love--this was the sort of feeling the Creator intended men and women to have for each other--mysterious, inexplicable, yet real as Nature. It was as it should be. These thoughts passed through Disston's mind swiftly. Up there on top of the world, in the moonlight, any consideration which interfered seemed trifling and indefensible. "You do love me?" He held her off a little and looked at her. He did not doubt it--he merely wanted to hear her say it. She replied simply: "Yes, Hughie. I have always." "You're so unexpectedly sweet!" he cried, as he again drew her close to him. "I've never forgotten that about you." He laughed softly as he added, "I can't understand why everyone that knows you isn't in love with you." "There's no one else who has ever seen this side of me. I am not even likable to most people." "It isn't so! But if it were, it doesn't make any difference, for you're going to marry me--you're going home with me and live a woman's life--the kind for which you were intended." The radiance that illuminated her face transformed and glorified it. She was woman--all woman, at heart--he had not been mistaken, he thought rapturously as he looked at her. She stared at him wide-eyed, dazzled by the picture as she breathed rather than whispered: "To be with you always--never to be lonely again--to have some one that cared really when I was sick or tired or heavy-hearted--never to be savage and bitter and vindictive, but to be glad every morning just to be living, and to know that each day would be a little nicer than the last one! It would be that way, wouldn't it, Hughie?" "How could it be otherwise when just being together is happiness?" he answered. "It's like peeking into Paradise," she said, wistfully. "But you will--you'll promise me? You'll give up this?" There was a faint note of anxiety in his earnestness as he laid a hand upon her shoulder and looked at her steadily. In the long space of time that she took to answer, the radiance died out of her face like a light that is extinguished slowly: "I'll tell you in the morning, Hughie. I must think. I make mistakes when I do what my heart impels me to. My impulses have been wrong always. I rely upon my head nowadays. I am weak to-night, and I've just judgment enough left to know it." "But, Kate!" he expostulated in a kind of terror. "There isn't anything to argue about--to consider. This isn't business." She shook her head.