shed a smile at him and he smiled back. "I shall be very
serious on mine."

"Of course. Derry, wouldn't you like a honeymoon here?"

"I should like it anywhere--with you--"

"Well," she drew a deep breath, "Daddy says we may--"

"We may what, Jean-Joan?"

"Get married--"

"Before he goes?"

"Yes."

She leaned forward to get the full effect of his surprise, to watch the
dawn of his delight.

But something else dawned. Embarrassment? Out of a bewildering
silence she heard him say, "I am not sure, dear, that it will be best
for us to marry before he goes."

She had a stunned feeling that, quite unaccountably, Derry was failing
her. A shamed feeling that she had offered herself and had been
rejected.

Something of this showed in her face. "My dear, my dear," he said,
"let us go in. I can tell you better there."

Once more in the warm sitting room with the door shut behind them, he
lifted her bodily in his arms. "Don't you know I want it," he
whispered, tensely. "Tell me that you know--"

When he set her down, his own face showed the stress of his emotion.
"You are always to remember this," he said, "that no matter what
happens, I am yours, yours--always, till the end of time."

Instinctively she felt that this Derry was in some way different from
the Derry she had left the day before. There was a hint of
masterfulness, a touch of decision.

"Will you remember?" he repeated, hands tight on her shoulders.

"Yes," she said, simply.

He bent and kissed her. "Then nothing else will matter." He placed a
big chair for her in front of the fire, and drew another up in front of
it. Bending forward, he took her hands. "I am glad I found you alone.
What luck it was to find you alone!"

He tried then to tell her what he had come to tell. Yet, after all
there was much that he left unsaid. How could he speak to her of the
things he had seen in his father's shadowed house? How fill that
delicate mind with a knowledge of that which seemed even to his greater
sophistication unspeakable?

So she wondered over several matters. "How can he want to marry Hilda?
I can't imagine any man wanting Hilda."

"She is handsome in a big fine way."

"But she is not big and fine. She is little and mean, but I could
never make Daddy see it."

He wondered if McKenzie would see it now.

Mary Connolly, coming in through the back door to her warm kitchen,
heard voices. Standing in the dark hall which connected