Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Several words were spelled in two different ways and not corrected; they are listed at the end of this book. A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and they are also listed at the end. "_To Love_" "_To love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden._" _R. L. STEVENSON_ "_TO LOVE_" _By Margaret Peterson : Author of_ "_The Lure of the Little Drum," "Tony Bellew," etc._ _LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LTD. PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. :: :: 1917_ "TO LOVE" CHAPTER I "Oh, but the door that waits a friend Swings open to the day. There stood no warder at my gate To bid love stand or stay." "You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"--Gilbert Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as he glanced at his companion, were uneasy and not quite honest. "We are the right sort of people to drift together, aren't we, Joan?" His hands as he spoke were restless, fidgeting with a piece of string which he tied and untied repeatedly. Joan Rutherford sat very straight in her chair, her eyes looking out in front of her. His words had called just the faintest tinge of colour to her cheeks. It was not exactly a beautiful face, but it was above everything else lovable and appealing. Joan was twenty-three, yet she looked still a child; the lines of her face were all a little indefinite, except the obstinacy of her chin and the frankness of her eyes. Her one claim to beauty, indeed, lay in those eyes; wide, innocent, unfathomable, sometimes green, sometimes brown flecked with gold. They seemed to hint at tragedy, yet they were far more often laughter-filled than anything else. For the rest, Joan was an ordinary independent young lady of the twentieth century who had lived in London "on her own" for six months.