ity, but he did know that the whole vast world was no price for
this moment of rapture.

She was the first to speak.

"Why did we have to run away? Aren't you supposed to have a perfect
right to--to take me wherever you please--especially from a place like
that, and such outrageous treatment?"

"I am only supposed to have that right," he answered. "As a matter of
fact, I committed a species of violence in Theodore's house, compelling
him to act at the point of the gun. Technically speaking, I had no
right to proceed so far. But, aside from that, when they sprung the
alarm--well, the time had come for action.

"Had the constable dragged me away, as a legal offender--which he would
doubtless have done on the charge of two householding citizens--the
delay would have been most annoying, while a too close investigation of
my status as a husband might have proved even more embarrassing."

A wave of crimson swept across her face.

"Of course." She relapsed into silence for a moment. Then she added:
"What does it all mean, anyway? How dared they carry me off like this?
How did you happen to come? When did you find that I had gone? What
do you think we'd better do?"

"Answer one question at a time," said Garrison, stuffing his
handkerchief into the tube, lest the driver overhear their
conversation. "There is much to be explained between us. In the first
place, tell me, Dorothy, what happened just after I 'phoned you last
evening, and you made an appointment to meet me in the park."

"Why, I hardly know," she said, her face once more a trifle pale. "I
went upstairs to get ready, thinking to slip out unobserved. In the
act of putting on my hat, I was suddenly smothered in the folds of a
strong-smelling towel thrown over my head, and since that time I have
scarcely known anything till this morning, when I waked in the bed at
Theodore's house, fully dressed, and chained as you saw me."

"But--these roses?" he said, lightly placing his hand upon them. "How
did you happen to have them along?"

It was not a question pertinent to the issues in hand, but it meant a
great deal to his heart.

"Why--I--I was wearing them--that's all," she stammered. "No one
stopped to take them off."

He was satisfied. He wished they might once and for all dismiss the
world, with all its vexations, its mysteries, and pains, and ride on
like this, through the June-created loveliness bathed in its
sunlight--comrades and lovers,