“A sacrifice, Max. That’s the first really stupid thing I ever heard you say. It isn’t a sacrifice; it’s a result, a consequence of the fact that I love you. It isn’t a question of my doing it, or your letting me. It simply can’t be otherwise. The other things I used to value--parties and pretty clothes and luxuries--they were a sort of game I played because I did not know any other. But only part of me was alive then. I was like a blind person; and they were my stick; but now that I can see, the stick is just in my way. It isn’t silly and romantic to believe in love, Max. The hardest-headed, most practical people believe in it--every one who has any sense really believes in it, when they find it. To be poor, to be uncomfortable--it’s a price, but a small one to pay for love. Isn’t that true--true, at least, as far as you’re concerned?” “Oh, yes, as far as I’m concerned--” “Then what right have you to think it’s not true to me? Don’t be such a moral snob, Max. If love’s the best thing in the world for you, it’s ever so much more so for me--I need it more.” “Nobody could need it more than I do,” he answered, suddenly clasping her to him. “It’s the way it’s going to be, anyhow,” she murmured. “I can’t let you go,” he said, as if arguing with an unseen auditor. She nodded in a somewhat contracted space. “That’s it,” she announced. “It has to be.” It was only a few days later that Nancy Almar, driving past a well-known house-furnishing shop on her way home to tea, was surprised to observe her brother standing, with a salesman at his elbow, in trancelike contemplation of a small white enameled ice-box. With her customary decision, Nancy ordered her chauffeur to stop, and entering the shop by another door she stood close beside Hickson during his purchase of the following articles: the ice-box, an improved coffee percolator and a complete set of kitchen china of an extremely decorative pattern. “Bless me, Ned,” she said suddenly in his ear, “might one ask when you are going to housekeeping, and with whom?” There was no denying that Ned’s start was guilty, and his manner confused as he answered, “Oh, they’re not for me--” The salesman who, perhaps, lacked tact, or possibly only wanted to get away to wait on another customer, said at this point: “And the address, sir? I have the name--Mrs. Max Riatt.” “Riatt married!” cried Nancy. “But to whom? I thought he had nothing left in the world.” “He hasn’t,” answered Ned, hastily scribbling the address on a card and handing it to the man. “Oh, then he’s married some one who loves him for himself alone, I know. That faithful sleek-headed girl from his home town. Won’t Christine be angry when she hears it! She always likes her old loves to pine a long time before they console themselves. Let us go and tell her. Or is she away still?” A rather sad smile lit up Hickson’s countenance as he followed his sister to her motor. “I think she knows it,” he said.