The girl's laugh rippled out, and in her violet eyes the twinkle sparkled. She liked him best when he was content to clothe his words in the easy garb of jest, so she countered in paraphrase. "When are you going to let my answer be your answer, and my decision your decision?" "It's no trouble to ask," he impudently assured her. "You remember the man who "Proposed forty thousand and ninety-six times, --And each time, but the last, she said, 'No.' You see the whole virtue of that man lay in his pertinacity." After a moment's silence he added, in a voice out of which had gone all facetiousness even while it lingered in the words themselves, "There are a thousand reasons, Anne, why I can't give you up. I've forgotten nine hundred and ninety-nine of them but I remember one. I love you utterly." Her eyes met his with direct gravity. "But why, Morgan?" she demanded with a candid directness. "I'm the opposite in type of every one else you cultivate or care for. I'm really not your sort of person at all, you know." "Perhaps," he said, "it's because you are the most thoroughbred woman I know, and I want to be proud of my wife. Perhaps it's merely that you're you." "Thank you," she said simply. "It's a pity, Morgan dear, that I can love you in every way except the one way. I wish you'd pick out a girl really suited to you." "By the 'every way except the one way,'" he interposed, "you mean platonically?" Anne nodded, and the man said, "Of course I know the reason. It's Boone." "Yes." The admission was disarmingly frank. "It's Boone. I've just had a letter from him. He won his race for the legislature and now he's laying down his lines of campaign for the bigger prize of the congressional race next time." Morgan's smile was innocent of grudge-bearing. "I know. I wired congratulations this morning. Of course his race was really won when he came out of the primaries victorious." Anne reflected that in the old days Morgan would have spoken differently, and in a less generous spirit. To him a contest for a legislative seat from a rough hill district must appear almost trivial, and for the victor his personal rancour might have left no room for congratulation. He himself had, in a larger battle, just won more conspicuous prizes of reputation and power, and yet the heartiness of his tone as he spoke of Boone's little success was sincere and in no sense marred by any taint of the perfunctory. "It was rather handsome of Boone to go back there and throw his hat into the ring," he continued gravely. "He might have harvested quicker and showier results here, but he wanted to be identified with his own people. God knows they need a Progressive, in that benighted hinterland." Anne's eyes mirrored her gratification, but before she could give it expression the car stopped.