the gardens. I saw that he was too
excited to allow me to speak first.

"I have burnt my ships!" he cried, when we were out of earshot of the
crowd. "I have told her everything. I have insisted that it's simple
torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. It's well
enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her
reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care
for nothing, I know nothing, but that I love her with every pulse of my
being--and that everything else has been a hideous dream, from which she
may wake me into blissful morning with a single word!"

I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him gravely. "You have told
her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?"

"The whole story! I have given it up--I have thrown it to the winds. I
have broken utterly with the past. It may rise in its grave and give me
its curse, but it can't frighten me now. I have a right to be happy, I
have a right to be free, I have a right not to bury myself alive. It was
not _I_ who promised--I was not born then. I myself, my soul, my mind,
my option--all this is but a month old! Ah," he went on, "if you knew
the difference it makes--this having chosen and broken and spoken! I am
twice the man I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was
a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge and cleverness about her, which
oppressed me in the midst of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but
of being too happy!"

I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused a moment,
and took off his hat and fanned himself. "Let me perfectly understand,"
I said at last. "You have asked Madame Blumenthal to be your wife?"

"The wife of my intelligent choice!"

"And does she consent?"

"She asks three days to decide."

"Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. I am bound
to let you know I told her."

"So much the better!" cried Pickering, without apparent resentment or
surprise. "It's not a brilliant offer for such a woman, and in spite of
what I have at stake, I feel that it would be brutal to press her."

"What does she say to your breaking your promise?" I asked in a moment.

Pickering was too much in love for false shame. "She tells me that she
loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. She agrees with me that
I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption from the common law. What
I claim is simply free