She laid her hand on his and spoke in her sweet low voice, gazing upwards. 'George! I am so happy, that I want everybody else to be happy as well. The angels, I am sure, must lose some of their joy in wishing that all were with them. I pity all those poor girls who have no lovers: all those poor married people who are lying in poverty: all those poor creatures who are trying for what they cannot get; all those who are weeping outside the gates of Heaven. George, it is a beautiful world, and it should be such a happy world: there should be nothing but joy all through life. There is such an abundance of happiness possible in it. Sadness is only a passing cloud: anxiety is only a touch of east wind: evil and pain are only fleeting shadows.' She sighed and clasped her hands, and the tears rose to her eyes. 'We shall grow old together, George,' she went on, murmuring rather than speaking.--I omit her lover's interruptions and interjections.--'You will always love me, long after my beauty--you know you will call it beauty, George--is past and gone: even when I am a poor old crone doubled up in my arm-chair: you will always love me. My life will be full--full--full of love. Perhaps----' Here her face flushed, and she stopped. 'We shall have no trouble about money: we shall go on always learning more and more, growing wiser and wiser and wiser. You will be a wise and good man, thinking and working all your life for other people, just as Mr. Dering imagined--three weeks ago. Everybody will love and respect you. Then you will grow grey-headed, you poor, dear boy; and all the world will say how wise and strong you are; and I shall be prouder of my old husband than even I was of my young lover. The life that others have dreamed, we shall live. Every day shall come laden with its own joy, so that we would not, if we could help it, suffer it to go away.' She struck a deeper note, and her voice trembled and sank and her eyes filled with tears: 'Life shall be all happiness, as God intended for us. Even Death will be little sorrow, for the separation will be so short.' Once more she laid her hand on his. Even to the most frivolous, the prospect of the wedded life awakens grave and solemn thoughts: for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and brains to understand, there is no prospect so charged with chances and possibilities, where even life itself may become a Death in Life. When George left her in the evening, he drove to see Athelstan. 'So,' he said, 'you have been courting all day, I suppose. You ought to have had enough of it. Sit down and have something--a pipe--a cigar.--Well--you are going to be very jolly, I suppose. Elsie's little fortune will help a bit, won't it?' 'I should think so, indeed.'