Marley had never seen Mrs. Powell before, but he recalled in a flash that she filled his conception of her; and this delicate, sensitive little face completed the picture he remembered long ago to have formed. When he saw Powell standing there, his hands behind him, unequal to the ordeal of being entertained in Judge Blair's house, bowing stiffly and forcing a smile on the few occasions when he was spoken to or thought he was being spoken to, he had a wish to go to him, but he could not then leave his place by Lavinia's side. He was glad a moment later when he saw his father and Wade Powell in conversation, and as he and Lavinia passed them on their way out to the dining-room he heard his father say: "Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Powell, when I was young my creed was founded on the fact of sin in man; but now that I am old, I find it more and more founded on the fact of the good that is in all of them." When the supper was over, Lawrence gave the cheer that every one wished to see come to the wedding by clearing the parlor for a dance, and Marley was glad that his position now permitted him to refrain from dancing with a valid excuse. Marley thought that Lavinia never looked so pretty as she did when she stood at the head of the stairs after she had donned her blue traveling gown, drawing on her gloves and waiting for the carriage that was to drive them to the station. Her face was rosy in the light that filled the house, and she met his eyes with a fond, contented glance. "Are you happy?" he asked. "Don't you see?" she said, looking up at him. "And will you be happy in that big city, away from every one you know, as the wife of a newspaper man?" "I shall be happy anywhere with you." "Our dreams are coming true," Marley said, "after a fashion. And yet not just as we dreamed them, after all." "In all the essentials they are, aren't they?" "Yes, but you know our dream was that I was to practise law." "Well, we still have that dream." "Yes, we still have it; maybe it will come true. Weston says that our dreams are as much realities in our lives as anything else." THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy Average, by Brand Whitlock