“But it’s just that, Edna,” he interjected quickly. “I may never be famous. I may be obscure, and we may be poor, relatively speaking, all our lives,” and he sighed dismally. “Oh, yes, you will, and oh, no, we shan’t!” she exclaimed buoyantly. “Surely, you don’t expect me to believe that you are not going to succeed and to make a name for yourself? We must take some chances--if that is a chance. You have told me yourself that you intended to succeed.” “In the end, yes.” “Why, then, shouldn’t I believe it, too? It would be monstrous--disloyal and unromantic not to. I won’t listen to a word more on that score, please. And the rest follows, doesn’t it? We are marrying because we love each other and believe we can help each other, and I am sure one of the reasons why we love each other is that we both have enthusiasm and find life intensely absorbing and admire that in the other. There’s the great difference between me now and what I was at eighteen. The mere zest of existence seems to me so much greater than it used. There are so many interesting things to do, so many interesting things which we would like to do. And now we shall be able to do them together, shan’t we?” she concluded, her eyes lighted with confident happiness, her cheeks mantling partly from love, partly, perhaps, from a sudden consciousness that she was almost playing the wooer. Morgan was equal to the occasion. “Until death do us part, Edna. This is the joy of which I have dreamed for years and wondered if it could ever be mine,” he whispered, as he looked into her face with all the ardor of his soul and kissed her on the lips. That evening he hooked his arm in mine on the piazza after dinner and said, “You builded better than you knew, George. We are engaged, and she’s the one woman in the world for me. I’ve told her everything--everything, and she isn’t afraid.” “And you give me the credit of it. That’s Christian and handsome. I’ll say one thing for her which any one can see from her face, that she has good looks and intelligence. As to the rest, you monopolized her so that our acquaintance is yet to begin.” “It shall begin at once,” said Morgan, with a happy laugh. “But what about you, George?” “I leave for New York to-night. Now that the young lovers have plighted their troth my presence is no longer necessary. A sudden telegram will arrive.” “But Mrs. Spinney? We have begun to--er--hope--” “Hope?” “Begun to think--wondered if--” “I were going to marry a woman several years my senior who has the effrontery to believe that she can lecture acceptably on the entire range of literary and social knowledge from the Troubadours and the Crusades to Rudyard Kipling and the Referendum? Such is the reward of disinterested self-sacrifice!” “Forgive me, George. I knew at first that you were trying to do me a good turn, but--but you were so persistent that you deceived us. I’m really glad there’s nothing in it.”