ected of it. It was
his right arm which slowly drew her hands up, one after the other, and
indicated to them that their place was locked together, behind his
neck.

An old garden in South Carolina is a place to lure the Northerner
out-of-doors. Before breakfast next morning Burns was walking down the
box-bordered paths, feasting his gaze and his sense of fragrance on
the clumps of blue and white violets, the clusters of gay crocuses, the
splendid spikes of Roman hyacinths. But he did not fail to keep track of
all doorways in sight, and when she appeared at the open French window
of the drawing-room he was there in a trice, offering her a bunch of
purple violets and feasting his eyes upon her morning freshness.

"I'm still dreaming, I think," said he when he had drawn her back
into the quiet room long enough to satisfy himself with the active
demonstration that possession means privilege, and had himself fastened
the violets in the front of her crisp white morning dress. "Dreaming
that I can stay down here in this wonderful paradise with you and not go
back to the slave's life I lead."

"You would never be happy away from that slave's life long, you know,"
she reminded him. "The rush of it is the joy of it to you."

"How will it be to you? I shall be yours, you remember, till Joe
Tressler or any other ne'er-do-weel wants me, then I'm his."

"But you'll always come back to me," said she.

"And will you be content with that?"

"So long as you want to come back."

He looked steadily into her eyes, and his own took fire. "Want to come
back! I've waited a long time to find the woman I could be sure I should
always want to come back to. I thought there would never be such a
woman: not for an erratic fellow like me.... But now I'm wondering how I
shall ever be able to stay away."

CHAPTER XIV. IN WHICH HE DEFIES SUPERSTITION

"Hades of Hymen! Red, are you making calls this morning?"

"Why not? I'm not to be married till noon, am I?"

"I say, take me with you, will you? I want to go along with a man who
has the nerve to see patients up to the last minute before his wedding!"

"Takes less nerve than to sit around and wait for the fateful hour, I
should say. Come on, if you think you'll have time to dress when you get
back. It may be close work."

"Haven't you got to dress yourself?" demanded Arthur Chester, settling
himself in the car beside its driver. "Or shall you go to the altar in
tweeds with April