some day to ask. Yet it did not seem to her an unfair bargain, and
perhaps she was right.

"I couldn't marry you," she said. "I couldn't change. All your pretty
things and the way you live--it would be like a cage to me. I like my
life the way it is; but yours--"

"Do you think I would ask Wilsey to dinner every night or try to mold you
to be like Mrs. Baxter?"

She laughed.

"You'd have a hard time. I never could have married again. I'd make you a
poor wife, but I'm a wonderful friend."

"Your friendship would be more happiness than I had any right to hope
for," and then he added in a less satisfied tone: "But friendship is so
uncertain. You don't make any announcements to your friends or vows to
each other, unless you're at an age when you cut your initials in the
bark of a tree. That's what I'd like to do. I suppose you think I'm an
old fool."

"Two of us," said Mrs. Wayne, and wiped her eyes. She cried easily, and
had never felt the least shame about it.

It was a strange compact--strange at least for her, considering that only
a few hours before she had thought of him as a friendly, but
narrow-minded, old stranger. Something weak and malleable in her nature
made her enter lightly into the compact, although all the time she knew
that something more deeply serious and responsible would never allow her
to break it. A faint regret for even an atom of lost freedom, a vein of
caution and candor, made her say:

"I'm so afraid you'll find me unsatisfactory. Every one has, even Pete."

"I think I shall ask less than any one," he returned.

The answer pleased her strangely.

Presently a ring came at the bell--a telegram. The expected guest was
detained at the seminary. Lanley watched with agonized attention. She
appeared to be delighted.

"Now you'll stay to dine," she said. "I can't remember what there is
for dinner."

"Now, that's not friendly at the start," said he, "to think I
care so much."

"Well, you're not like a theological student."

"A good deal better, probably," answered Lanley, with a gruffness that
only partly hid his happiness. There was no real cloud in his sky. If
Mrs. Wayne had accepted his offer of marriage, by this time he would have
begun to think of the horror of telling Adelaide and Mathilde and his own
servants. Now he thought of nothing but the agreeable evening before him,
one of many.

When Pete came in to dress, Lanley was just in the act of drawing the
last neat double lin