"But it isn't all," he interrupted, hastily. "I don't say but what if father had given us his blessing, and come down with another six thousand a year--we could hardly scrub along on less--I'd have taken it and been thankful. But now that he hasn't--well, I can see that it's all for the best. It's--it's brought me out, as you might say, and forced me to a decision." I harked back to the sentence in which he had broken in on me. "If it was all, Hugh, then that would oblige me to make up my mind at once. I couldn't be the means of compelling you to break with your family and give up a large income." He cried out impatiently, "Alix, what the dickens is a family and a large income to me in comparison with you?" I must say that his intensity touched me. Tears sprang into my eyes. I risked Gladys's presence to say: "Hugh, darling, I love you. I can't tell you what your generosity and nobleness mean to me. I hadn't imagined that there was a man like you in the world. But if you could be in my place--" He pushed aside his coffee-cup to lean with both arms on the table and look me fiercely in the eyes. "If I can't be in your place, Alix, I've seen women who were, and who didn't beat so terribly about the bush. Look at the way Libby Jaynes married Tracy Allen. She didn't talk about his family or his giving up a big income. She trusted him." "And I trust you; only--" I broke off, to get at him from another point of view. "Do you know Libby Jaynes personally?" He nodded. "Is she--is she anything like me?" "No one is like you," he exclaimed, with something that was almost bitterness in the tone. "Isn't that what I'm trying to make you see? You're the one of your kind in the world. You've got me where a woman has never got a man before. I'd give up everything--I'd starve--I'd lick dust--but I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, and I'd cling to you and keep you." He, too, risked Gladys's presence. "But you're so damn cool, Alix--" "Oh no, I'm not, Hugh, daring," I pleaded on my own behalf. "I may seem like that on the outside, because--oh, because I've such a lot to think of, and I have to think for us two. That's why I'm asking you if you found Libby Jaynes like me." He looked puzzled. "She's--she's decent." he said, as if not knowing what else to say. "Yes, of course; but I mean--does she strike you as having had my kind of ways? Or my kind of antecedents?" "Oh, antecedents! Why talk about them?" "It's what you've been doing, isn't it, for the past half-hour?" "Oh, mine, yes; because I want you to see that I've got a big asset in Cousin Andrew Brew. I know he'll do anything for me, and if you'll trust me, Alix--" "I do trust you, Hugh, and as soon as you have anything like what would make you independent, and justified in braving your family's disapproval--" He took an apologetic tone. "I said just now that we couldn't scrape along on less than twelve thousand a year--"