"Why not?" he said gruffly. "So long as one has health one can always enjoy." "Ah! but it needs more than health," she returned. "We have such a lot of other things. Surely we shall be required to pay back some day?" "Rot!" he answered testily. "Why should one pay for one's rights? Happiness is a right. We've got it. We'll keep it. Hold fast to it, little girl, and don't encourage morbid superstition." He stood still in the path, and took her face between his hands, and held it so, imprisoned. "By God!" he cried, with sudden, swift vehemence, "no power on earth shall wrest mine from me. My happiness is bound up in you, and only death can take it from me. You aren't going to escape me that way, Pam,--you are so exuberantly alive." Pamela laughed softly, and twined her arms about his neck, drawing closer to him. "But you'd love me sick, dear?" she said... "You'd love me sick just the same? If you were bed-ridden I'd only love you the more tenderly." "Fishing as usual," he returned, and kissed her. "A fine emotional scene for a middle-aged married man. One would suppose we had been married five months instead of five good years." "Five good years!" Pamela repeated, and added presently, "And they have been good. I wonder if I had never met you what I should be doing now?" "You'd have met some one else," he answered. "Matrimony is so much more your forte than anything else." "And you?" she hazarded. "Would you have met some one too?" "No," he replied with a convincing directness which gratified her immensely, so that she desired to kiss him again, and only refrained from fear of irritating him with an excess of emotionalism. "I didn't set out with that idea in my mind. I should be exploring the interior, as I purposed doing--and probably have become a physical wreck with fever and other ills. You saved me from that when you bewitched me on the outward voyage." "I didn't know I was doing it," she returned, with a quiet, satisfied laugh. "You were such a grave, reserved person. I always felt proud when you came and talked with me." "You don't feel that now," he said banteringly. "Not proud, no." She slipped a hand into his. "But happy always," she said, pressing his hand. "Not so bad an admission after five years of it," he remarked with reflective complacency. "I take it that proves fairly conclusively that we were meant for each other. I don't profess to understand this old riddle of a universe, Pam; but I've grasped the human need at least; and it doesn't fit in with the world's decree that the individual should be judged according to established custom. The entire social scheme, with its restrictions and its definite rules, is nothing but a well-intentioned muddle. At the back of the new law stands the great primeval laws which refuse to be set aside." He broke off abruptly with a short, constrained laugh, and added jerkily: