"Don't, dear, don't," she pleaded. "Why, it is nothing. What does it matter? What does anything matter, so long as we have each other?" She stroked his hair, she called him by all her endearing names. She tried to take his hands from his face, that she might get him to look at her. But he resisted. "No," he said. "I'm no good; I'm a failure; I'm worse than a failure. I'm a fool, a poor, weak, silly fool." "Hush, Glenn, hush!" she whispered, as if he were uttering blasphemies. "You must not, you must not!" She shook him in a kind of fear. "Look at me!" she said. "Look at me!" He remained obdurate, slowly shaking his head from side to side. "Look at me!" Lavinia repeated. "Don't you see--don't you see that--I love you?" A change came over him, subtile, but distinct. Slowly he raised his head, and then he put his arms about her and held her close, and gradually a comfort stole over him,--a comfort so delicious that he felt himself hardly worthy, because he now saw that all through the day he had had a subconsciousness that it would come to him at evening, and that he had somehow exaggerated his own grief in order to make this certain comfort the sweeter when it came. It seemed to Marley, after he and Lavinia had sat there for a while, that he had come out of some nightmare; sanity returned, things assumed once more their proper proportions and relations to each other. He found himself smiling, if not laughing just yet, and with Lavinia's hope and confidence the future opened to him once more. Now and then, of course, his disappointment would roll over him as a great wave, and once he said ruefully: "But think of the little home we were going to have!" "But we're going to have it," Lavinia replied, smiling on him, "we're going to have it, just the same!" "But we'll have to wait!" "Well, we're young," said Lavinia, "and it won't be so very long." "But I wanted it to be in the spring." "May be it will be, who knows?" Lavinia could smile in this reassurance, now that she knew it could not be in the spring. They discussed their future in all its phases, with the hope that Lavinia could so easily inspire in him; Marley was to keep on with his law studies; there was nothing else now to do--unless something should turn up--there was always that hope. "And it will, you'll see," said Lavinia. They discussed, too, Carman and Wade Powell. Marley thought that Lavinia might return to her old severity with Powell; when he expected her to do this, he was preparing to defend Powell; when she did not, but was generous with him, and urged Marley to reflect that he had done all he had done out of a spirit of kindness, Marley was disposed to be severe with Powell himself. Carman, they agreed, had acted handsomely; they could not find cause to blame him. "No," said Marley, "he treated me all right; I believe he was really sorry for me." And then, at the thought of Carman's having pity for him, his rebellion flamed up again.