“As we ought to be!” “Why, Tommie Gilfoyle!” And now he was committed. As when he wrote poetry the grappling-hooks of rhyme dragged him into statements he had not dreamed of at the start and was afraid of at the finish--so now he stumbled into a proposal he could not clamber out of. He must flounder through. The idea was so deliriously unexpected, so fascinatingly novel to Kedzie, that she fell in love with it. Immediately she would rather have died than remain unmarried to Tommie Gilfoyle. But there were difficulties. CHAPTER II In the good old idyllic days it had been possible for romantic youth to get married as easily as to get dinner--and as hard to get unmarried as to get wings. Couples who spooned too long at seaside resorts and missed the last train home could wake up a preacher and be united in indissoluble bonds of holy matrimony for two dollars. The preachers of that day slept light, in order to save the reputations of foolish virgins. But now a greedy and impertinent civil government had stepped in and sacrilegiously insisted on having a license bought and paid for before the Church could officiate. And the license bureau was not open all night, as it should have been. Kedzie knew nothing of this, but Gilfoyle was informed. Theoretically he believed that marriage should be rendered impossible and divorce easy. But he could no more have proposed an informal alliance with his precious Kedzie than he could have wished that his mother had made one with his father. His mother and father had eloped and been married by a sleepy preacher, but that was poetic and picturesque, seeing that they did not fail to wake the preacher. Gilfoyle's reverence for Kedzie demanded at least as much sanctity about his union with her. It is curious how habits complicate life. Here were two people whom it would greatly inconvenience to separate. Yet just because it was a custom to close the license bureau in the late afternoon they must wait half a night while the license clerk slept and snored, or played cards or read detective stories or did whatever license clerks do between midnight and office hours. And just because people habitually crawl into bed and sleep between midnight and forenoon, these two lovers were already finding it hard to keep awake in spite of all their exaltation. They simply must sleep. Romance could wait. Gilfoyle knew that there were places enough where Kedzie and he could go and have no questions asked except, “Have you got baggage, or will you pay in advance?” But he would not take his Kedzie to any such place, any more than he would leave a chalice in a saloon for safe-keeping.