e and stay with us as long as you will," Mrs. Kemp
promptly said with true kindliness. "I insist! Walter would want it, if
I didn't--he's very fond of you, too."

Thus fortune smiled again upon Milly, and the two friends plunged into
feminine details of dress and domestic contrivance. Eleanor Kemp, who
had a gift lying unused of being a capable manager, a poor man's
helpmate, tried her best to interest Milly in the little methods of
economizing and doing by which dollars are pushed to their utmost
usefulness. Milly listened politely, but she felt sure that "all that
would work out right in time." She could not believe that Jack would be
poor always.... The older woman smiled at her confidence, and after she
had gone shook her head.

* * * * *

The young artist had his due share of pride. When he realized that the
woman he loved and meant to marry was staying with the Kemps because she
had no other refuge, he urged their immediate marriage, though he also
had a fair-sized package of bills in his desk drawer and needed a few
months in which to straighten out his affairs. Milly was eager to be
married,--"When all would come right somehow." So she opposed no
objection.

Indeed as she let her lover understand, she was indifferent about the
mere ceremony. She would go and live with him any time, anywhere, if it
weren't for the talk it would make and hurting her father's feelings.
Milly was, of course, an essentially monogamic creature, like any
normal, healthy woman. She meant simply that, once united with the man
she really loved, the thing was eternal. If he should cease to love her,
it would be the end of everything for her, no matter whether she had the
legal bond or not. However flattered her lover may have been by this
exhibition of trust, Bragdon was too American in instinct to entertain
the proposal seriously. "What's the use of that, anyway?" he said. "We
mean to stick--we might as well get the certificate."

So, as Milly confided to Eleanor Kemp, they determined "just to go
somewhere and have it done as quickly as possible, without fuss and
feathers."

And Mrs. Kemp, realizing what a sacrifice this sort of marriage must
mean to any girl,--without the pomp and ceremony,--felt that it was a
good sign for the couple's future, showing a real desire to seek the
essentials and dispense with the frills. She and her husband had planned
to give the young adventurers a quiet but conventio