d some
sort of family disagreement and are not on speaking terms."

"Never mind," she said, aloud, seeing a cloud on his face. "All that
will come out right. In time I'll win her love--you see if I don't."

His frown deepened, but he said nothing. Their bags had been left in
the little hall, and he went to get them. When he returned she was
standing before the wide mirror of the new-fashioned bureau. She had
taken off her hat and the elevated gas-jet on the wall threw a blaze of
light into her beautiful hair. He put down the bags and stood gazing at
her with eyes full of timid reverence and worship.

"Poor, dear little Tilly!" he said, almost huskily. "You look so lonely,
here just with me like this, away from your home and friends. I am not
worthy of you, little girl--no man is. I feel that. I know it down deep
inside of me. Until I met you I never knew what a good, pure girl was
like. Oh, you are so different from all the women I've ever known.
Somehow you seem to have dropped down from the skies."

She didn't fully understand him. How could she? And yet his look and
tone went straight to her heart. She stood staring at him for a moment
and then she advanced to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and
looked up into his eyes.

"You say I'm different from other girls, John. Well, you are different
from all other men. Oh, it is so very sweet of you--your silly fear that
you can't make me happy--your continual reference to that absurdity.
Why, John, I am so happy that I can't express it. No one else could have
made me so. I am the luckiest girl in the world."

Her throbbing lips invited it, and he bent down and kissed them. He drew
her into his arms. She felt his great breast quiver and heard him sigh.
Not yet was she comprehending him--not yet was he quite able to
comprehend himself.

CHAPTER XXIII

Among the men of John's trade it was deemed an effeminate thing for a
laboring-man to allow his marriage to cut into his duties to his daily
work. And as Cavanaugh already had a job waiting, which was the erection
of a fine brick residence on a near-by plantation, John joined him,
ready for work, on the day following the one of his arrival home. This
left Tilly all alone in the cottage. At first she was so absorbed by the
changes she was making about the house--the moving of this article or
that and the rehanging of the cheap pictures and curtains, that she had
little time for self-analysis or a study of