e.

"But didn't you expect me to rush to you the instant I heard you were a
free woman? Did you suppose there was anything to be taken for granted
between us?"

"Oh no," she said, "I think we understood each other pretty well, but
then, don't you see, I didn't suppose it would be like this. I am
expecting a trunk from New York every minute, and I thought when it came
I should be dressed like other people. Now that I am not a sister, I did
not want you to see me in these dreary clothes. Then I would go to my
mother's house, and I thought you would call on me there, and things
would go on more regularly; but you are so impetuous."

"My dearest love," said I, "it fills me with rapture to take you in my
arms in the same dress you wore when I fell in love with you. Often and
often as I looked at you through that grating have I thought that it
would be to me the greatest joy on earth if I could take you in my arms
and tell you that I loved you."

"You thought that!" exclaimed Sylvia; "it was very wrong of you."

"Right or wrong, I did it," said I, "and now I have her, my dear little
nun, here in my arms."

She ceased to push and looked up at me with a merry smile.

"Do you remember," she said, "the morning the wasp came near stinging
me?"

"Indeed I do," I said vehemently.

"Well, before that wasp came," she continued, "I used to be a good deal
afraid of you. I thought you were very learned and dignified, but after
I was so frightened, and you saw me without my bonnet, and all that, I
felt we were very much more like friends, and that was the very
beginning of my liking you."

"My darling," I exclaimed, "that wasp was the best friend we ever had.
Do you want to see it?" and releasing her, I took from my pocket the
pasteboard box in which I had placed our friend Vespa. As she looked at
the insect, her face was lighted with joyous surprise.

"And that is the same wasp?" she said, "and you kept it?"

"Yes, and shall always keep it," I said, "even now it has not ceased to
be our friend." And then I told her how my desire to take with me this
memento of her had held me back from the rolling Atlantic, and brought
me to her. She raised her face to me with her beautiful eyes in a mist
of tenderness, and this time her arms were extended.

"You are the dearest man," she said.

In less than a minute after she had spoken these words, Mother Anastasia
entered the room. She stood for a moment amazed, and then she hastily