laughed. "I shouldn't mind if you weren't beautiful, you know I
shouldn't, for you'd still be you."

Meg's practical common sense was not to be drugged by love's ether.
"Dear," she said happily, "don't talk rubbish! As if you, with your
artistic sense and love of beauty, would have fallen in love with me if
I had turned-in-feet and a face half forehead, just because I was me!"

They both laughed happily. Then Michael said, sadly and abruptly--his
voice had lost its confidence--"Why have I let myself say all this,
Meg? What thrust my feelings into expression, feelings I scarcely was
conscious of possessing until I saw you lit up by the shining stars? I
never, never planned such a thing."

"I know," Meg said. "We neither of us dreamed of it when we left the
hut, did we?"

"I had a thousand other things to consult you about, to tell you," he
said. "I have a thousand other things to do. I have a mission to
fulfil before I speak of love. It just came, it suddenly bubbled up
and poured over like water in a too-full bottle."

"Do you regret it?" Margaret said simply and sympathetically. She was
not hurt; she knew what he meant; she knew that he had more than once
spoken of the single-heartedness of a man's work, the work which Mike
hoped to do, when he had no family ties, no woman's love to bind him,
to nourish and satisfy.

"Dearest--I don't regret it," he said. "It was inevitable. Something
else would have called it forth if the stars hadn't. All the same, it
is of you I am thinking . . . I had no right to . . ."

"To what, Mike?"

"I'm a drifter, Meg, and I'm not ready to be anything else--I can't be."

"I don't want you to be anything else." Meg's voice and laugh were
Love. Her sincere eyes were happily confident.

"People who 'walk on their heads' don't make fortunes, beloved."

"People who think the desert is 'paradise enow' don't need fortunes."

Michael pressed the palms of her hands to his lips. "Dear strong
hands," he said, "are they willing to work with mine?"

"Oh, Mike," she said. "I'm so glad, so happy! It doesn't seem
fair--our world's all heaven to-night--I want others to have just a
little of it."

They listened to the silence.

Michael's thoughts were of his world-state, his religion of Love, the
closeness of God.

"Every star in the sky seems to know about our love," Meg said. "And I
think the waiting silence has been expecting this."

"I know," Michael said. "To me