on an ordinary conversation. "As you didn't agree with
me--"

"I do now," he said, quickly. "I see you were right, in everything. I
want to thank you for what you've done for Dorothea--and for me. I
didn't dream, a year ago, that the change in both of us could be so
great."

"Dorothea was a sweet little girl, to begin with--"

"Yes; but I don't want to talk about that now. She will express her own
sense of gratitude; but in the mean while I want to tell you mine. You
will understand something of its extent when I say that I ask you to be
my wife."

Diane neither spoke nor looked at him. The only sign she gave of having
heard him was a slight bowing of the head, as of one who accepts a
decree. The first few instants' stillness had the ineffable quality
which might spring from the abolition of time when bliss becomes
eternity. There was a space, not to be reckoned by any terrestrial
counting, during which each heart was caught up into wonderful spheres
of emotion--on his side the relief of having spoken, on hers the joy of
having heard; and though it passed swiftly it was long enough to give to
both the vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It was a vision that
never faded again from the inward sight of either, though the mists of
mortal error began creeping over it at once.

"If I take you by surprise--" he began, as he felt the clouds of reality
closing round him.

"No," she broke in, still without looking up at him; "I heard you
intended to ask me."

Though he made a little uneasy movement, he knew that this was precisely
what she might have been expected to say.

"I thought you had possibly heard that," he said, in her own tone of
quiet frankness, "and I want to explain to you that what happened was an
accident."

"So I imagined."

"If I spoke of you as my future wife, I must ask you to believe that it
was in the way of neither ill-timed jest nor foolish boast."

"You needn't assure me of that, because I could never have thought so.
If I want assurance at all it's on other points."

"If I can explain them--"

"I can almost explain them myself. What I require is rather in the way
of corroboration. Wasn't it much as the knight of old threw the mantle
of his protection over the shoulders of a distressed damsel?"

"I know what you mean; but I don't admit the justice of the simile."

"But if you did admit it, wouldn't it be something like what actually
occurred?"

"You're putting questions to me," h