l settled--I'll just marry you without being asked. The covenant
between you and me was made before the foundations of the world.
You're my man. I knew you the moment I saw you. So when I say, 'I,
Pearl, take you, Horace,' it's not a new contract--it's just a
ratification of the old. It's just the way we have of letting the
world know. You see dear, you just can't help it--it's settled."

"But are you sure, Pearl; you are so young in years; I mean--are you
sure you will not be sorry? I love you Pearl--I want you, but I desire
still more to see you get the most out of life."

"I'm sure," she said steadily. "If I can't have you, life has fooled
me--cheated me--and I do not believe God ever intended that. Peter
Neelands said I was in love with life, with romance; that because you
were the nearest hero I had selected you and hung a halo around you,
and that maybe I was mistaken."

"What does he know about it?" asked the doctor sharply.

"I told him," said Pearl. "He was the only person I could talk to, and
when there came not a word from you--and Mrs. Crocks told me you went
quite often to the city to see Miss Keith, I began to wonder if I
could be mistaken--so I tried to forget you."

"You did!"

"Yes. I worked two weeks on it, when I was in the city."

"How did you go about it?" he asked, after a pause.

"Peter said most girls were so romantic and ready to fall in love,
they often loved a man who cared nothing for them, but who married
them rather than break their hearts, and that's what causes so many
unhappy homes. Of course, it works the other way too, and he said
the way to tell if it were a real true, undying love, was to try the
'expulsive power of a new love.' That's a fine phrase, isn't it?"

"Well, Peter was willing to be experimented on. He said if he had come
to Millford about the same time you did, I might have selected him
instead of you, and made a hero of him."

"He has his nerve," exclaimed the doctor.

"O, I don't know," she said. "I mean I didn't know. I was willing to
see. So Peter stuck around all the time, and he drove me everywhere,
and always saw me home. I like him--all right--but you see I couldn't
make my heart beat when he came into the room, and there was no
rainbow in the sky, or music in the air, when he came to see me, and
every day I got more lonesome for you, until it just seemed as if I
couldn't go on. The three years when I thought you loved me, I saved
up a lot of happiness