If they
don't get the new deal that immortality promises they lose the whole
thing," I answered straight out from the shoulder. "And what about those
who die in infancy and--and you and me?"

"If you'll just kiss me and hush preaching to me I'll be entirely
satisfied and ready to die as soon as I have lifted that fifty thousand
out of old Jeffries with the judge's and the Reverend Gregory's garden
and done a few more commissions. Try kissing me and see if you don't
feel more cheerful," Nickols answered with a laugh, as he drew me close
to him. I sadly shut up the doors of my depths, warded off the
kiss--why, I didn't know--and persuaded him to go up to his rooms which
I had seen Sallie and Dabney put in order that afternoon.

It was midnight when I parted with Nickols at the head of the old
winding stairs in the fragrant darkness, lit only by the silver light of
the night from a long window at the front of the hall. He held me close
for a half second as he whispered:

"Let me make you happy. I understand."

"I don't understand, and until I do I'd make you miserable, dear," I
whispered back as I drew myself out of his reluctant arms and went into
my own door.

Then for a long midnight hour I stood at my deep window and looked out
over the garden, past the squat steeple silvering beyond the lilac
hedge, to Paradise Ridge in the dim distance, and tried to read my own
hieroglyphics. I needed help. Nickols had come after me to Goodloets in
a spirit of gentle determination and I knew the fight would be to the
finish. And why should I fight? Any woman ought to be proud to marry
Nickols Morris Powers, especially a woman who had loved him since her
heart had been developed to the knowledge of love. Very unostentatiously
and with perfect good taste Nickols had let me see that Marie VanClive
with her Knickerbocker ancestry and her Manhattan land-grants fortune
was very decidedly interested in him in her cultured and perfected young
way, and young Mrs. Houston had herself shown me the same thing on one
of the week-end flights we had had on her yacht. And beyond all that my
own heart told me that Nickols was desirable. His gentleness and his
tenderness and his daring and his humor were irresistible to a woman.
And his lazy acquiescence in life was peaceful and inviting to my own
strenuosity. I felt as if I had always been an eagle breasting the gale
with no place to alight, and now Nickols was calling to me from an
eyrie on a