“Oh! I am very glad you did n't!” she exclaimed. “Heaven forbid you should have the mercenary ideas of the average man. It is beautiful to have thought of me only.” “I am afraid I was thinking of myself, my dear,” said he. “I must get out of the way of it, and think of the two of us. Now let us be severely business-like. You have taken a load off my mind. There are a thousand things you can surround yourself with that I imagined you would lack.” He took her two hands and swung them backwards and forwards. “Now I shan't regard myself as such a criminal in asking you to marry me.” “Do you think two hundred a year a fortune, Jimmie?” she asked. “To the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts perhaps not--but everything is relative.” “Everything?” Her heart spoke suddenly, demanding relief. Their eyes met. “No, dear,” he said. “One thing at least is absolute.” An interlude of conviction succeeded doubt. She felt that she had never loved him so much as at that moment. It was more with the quickly lit passion of the awakened woman than with the ardour of a girl that she clasped her hands round his head and drew it down to their kiss. She had an awful need of the assurance of the absolute. It nerved her to face a discussion on ways and means with Aline, whom Jimmie at her request summoned from demure sewing in her little drawing-room. “You are right,” she had said, referring to his former remark. “We ought to be severely business-like. I must begin to learn things. You don't know how hopelessly ignorant I am.” Aline came down to give the first lesson in elementary housekeeping. She brought with her a pile of little black books which she spread out at the end of the long table. The two girls sat side by side. Jimmie hovered about them for a while, but was soon dismissed by Aline to a distant part of the studio, where, having nothing wherewith to occupy himself, he proceeded to make a charcoal sketch of the two intent faces. Aline, proud at being able to display her housewifely knowledge before appreciative eyes, opened her books, and expounded them with a charming business air. These were the receipts for the last twelve months; these the general disbursements. They were balanced to a halfpenny. “Of course anything I can't account for, I put down to the item 'Jimmie,'” she said naively. “He _will_ go to the money-drawer and help himself without letting me know. Is n't it tiresome of him?” Norma smiled absently, wrinkling her brows over the unfamiliar figures. She had no grasp of the relation the amounts of the various items bore to one another, but they all seemed exceedingly small. “I suppose it's necessary to make up this annual balance?” she asked. “Of course. Otherwise you would n't know how much you could apportion to each item. Jimmie says it's nonsense to keep books; but if you listen to Jimmie, you 'll have the brokers in in a month.” “Brokers?” Aline laughed at her perplexed look. “Yes, to seize the furniture in payment of debt.”