“I am very sorry I did, Donald, since you would really have liked it,” she said, wistfully and sorrowfully. “I should have thought of your feelings, and not of mine.” This is a mood I cannot withstand. “Dear heart,” I responded, “I have you, and all the books in the world are not worth a breath in comparison. What favor do you want me to do?” “To write a sort of last chapter—an ending, you know—telling about—about the rest.” “Have you forgotten it?” “I? Never! I couldn’t. But I want to have it all in the book, so that when Foster and Mai are older they can read it.” “I have no intention of sharing, even with our children, my under-the-rose idyl with the loveliest of girls. And when the children are older, they’ll be far more interested in their own heart secrets than they are in ours.” “Still, dear,” she pleaded, “they may hear from others some unkind and perverted allusions to our story; for you know what foolish things were said at the time of our marriage.” “If I remember rightly, some one—was it my mother or Mr. Whitely?”— “Both,” she answered. “—spread it abroad that I had trapped an heiress into marriage by means of an alias.” “Wasn’t it a delicious version!” she laughed merrily. “But no matter what’s ever tattled in the future, if Foster and Mai have your journal, they will always understand it.” “Maizie,” I urged, “if you let those imps of mischief read of our childish doings in this old library, they’ll either finish painting the plates in Kingsborough, or burn the house down in trying to realize an Inca of Peru at the stake.” “But I won’t read them those parts,” she promised; “especially if you write a nice ending, which they’ll like.” “Won’t it do to add just a paragraph, saying that our fairy godmamma found and gave you the journal, and that then we ‘lived happily ever after’?” “No, Donald,” she begged. “I want the whole story, to match the rest.” “Five years ago I knew the saddest and most dejected of fellows, whose misery was so great that he wailed it out on paper. But now I know only the happiest of mortals, and he cannot write in the lugubrious tone of yore—unless a lady of his acquaintance will banish him from her presence or do something else equally joy-destroying.” “Are you trying to bribe me into giving you a rest from my presence for a time?” “Undoubtedly,” I assented. “It’s a fearful strain to live up to you, and it is beginning to tell on me.” “If I didn’t know you were teasing, I should really be hurt. But I should like to ask you one thing.” “And that is?” “In your journal—well—of course I know that you were—that I am not—that your love made you think me what I never was in the least, Donald,” she faltered, “but still, perhaps—Do you remember what Mr. Blodgett said about his not giving Mrs. Blodgett for ten of the women he—? I hope you like my reality as much as your ideal.” “Haven’t you changed your idea of me, Maizie?” “Oh yes.” “And therefore you don’t love me as much?”