tell me, if it were so. I
was quite sure that it couldn't be, and besides, you told Philip...."

"I know; but I thought ... you see he told me that he loved you, and
that he was sure that you cared for him."

"I did, just as I do now. Oh, man, you have been so blind, or so noble.
Have I got to _ask_ you to marry me?"

For the barest instant she looked up at him, and he saw that the smile
he loved was whimsical as well as madly appealing.

"No," almost shouted Donald. "I won't hear of such a thing as your being
one of these 'new women.' You're a siren out of the olden days of mystic
legend, and I have kept my ears stopped up against your witching song,
which I was afraid to hear. But now I want to hear it, day and night,
through eternity. Wait, not yet. First ... Smiles, will you marry me?"

"Oh, what an anticlimax! Why did you have to become so practical and
unromantic, after such a splendid start," she laughed happily. "No lover
is supposed to ask that question with such brutal bluntness. Come, I
will teach you the romance of love."

It was dark on the veranda. The moon had suddenly slipped out of sight
behind one of the laggards in the retreating cloud army; but Donald
needed no earthly light in order to realize that Rose was holding out
her arms to him, as simply and frankly as she had five years before.

"Chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p, chir-r-r-p," thrilled the cricket underneath
the porch.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A LOST BROTHER

How long it may have been before the man, eager as he was to hear the
full explanation of the seeming miracle through which his happiness had
been made possible, was ready to urge Rose to tell the story which she
had promised, and what whispered words the cricket heard in the interim,
concern only the three of them.

When, at last, he was able to bring his winging thoughts down from the
clouds to earth, it was to discover still another unsuspected trait in
the woman who had become his all; for Smiles, eager and excited, was
still dwelling in a world of romance, and she insisted upon recounting
what had happened, almost verbatim, and in a dramatic manner quite
unlike the simplicity which naturally characterized her speech.

Nor could Donald's commonplace interruptions, during the course of which
he affirmed that fact _was_ stranger than fiction and that the world
_was_ a small place after all, check her narrative.

"I don't know whether I can make you understand why I acted as I did,