She grew suddenly wistful. "I'll tell you that," she said. "It was--it was because you let a third person into our little drama of Twin Fires. I--I was a fool, maybe. But I was playing out a kind--a kind of dream of home building. Two can play such a dream, if they don't speak of it. But not three. Then it becomes--it becomes, well, matter-of-facty, and people talk, and the bloom goes, and--you hurt me a little, that's all." I could not reply for a moment. What man can before the wistful sweetness of a woman's secret moods? I could only kiss her hair. Finally words came. "The dream shall be reality now," I said, "and you and I together will make Twin Fires the loveliest spot in all the hills. To-morrow we'll buy a stair carpet, and--lots of things--together." "Still with the pea money?" she gurgled, her gayety coming back. "No, sir; I've some money, too. Not much, but a little to take the place of the wedding presents I've no relatives to give me. I want to help furnish Twin Fires." She laid her fingers on my protesting lips. "I shall, anyway," she added. "We are two lone orphans, you and I, but we have each other, and all that is mine is yours, all--all--all!" Suddenly she threw her arms about my neck, and I was silent in the mystery of her passion. Chapter XVII I DO NOT RETURN ALONE Many people, I presume, long to fly from New York during a late June and early July hot spell. But nobody who does not possess a new place in the country, still unfurnished, with a garden crying for his attention and a brook wandering amid the pines, can possibly realize how the dust and heat of town affected me in the next ten days. It affected me the more because I saw how pale Stella was, how tired when the evenings came. With her woman's conscientiousness, she was struggling to do two weeks' work in one before leaving the dictionary. She even toiled several evenings, denying herself to me, while I wandered disconsolate along Broadway, or worked over my manuscripts at the club, surrounded by siphons of soda. At the luncheon hour and between five and six we shopped madly, getting a stair carpet, dining-room chairs (a present from her to herself and me, as she put it--fine Chippendale reproductions), a few rugs--as many as we could afford--and other necessary furnishings, including stuff for curtains. For the south room the curtains were gay Japanese silk from an Oriental store, to balance the Hiroshiges, and while we were buying them she slipped away from me and presently returned, the proud possessor of two small ivory elephants. "Look, somebody has sent us another present!" she laughed. "Folks are so good to us! These are to stand on the twin mantels, under the prints." "From whom are they?" I asked. "Your best friend and my worst enemy," she answered.