a friend of hers within the
week, and find courage to face them and tell them they _were_
beasts!--and more than that!--find courage to confess her own
mistakes--humble herself--acknowledge what she had abjured--bear
witness to the God whom once she believed abandoned her!"

She strove to open her lips in protest--lifted her disconcerted eyes
to his--shrank away a little as his hand fell over hers.

"I've never faltered," he said. "It damned near killed me.... But I'd
have gone on loving you, Palla, all my life. There never could have
been anybody except you. There was never anybody before you. Usually
there has been in a man's life. There never was in mine. There never
will be."

His firm hand closed on hers.

"I'm such an ordinary, every day sort of fellow," he said wistfully,
"that, after I began to realise how wonderful you are, I've been
terribly afraid I wasn't up to you.

"Even if I have cursed out your theories and creeds, it almost seemed
impertinent for me to do it, because you really have so many talents
and accomplishments, so much knowledge, so infinite a capacity for
things of the mind, which are rather out of my mental sphere. And I've
wondered sometimes, even if you ever consented to marry me, whether
such a girl as you are could jog along with a business man who likes
the arts but doesn't understand them very well and who likes some of
his fellow men but not all of them and whose instinct is to punch
law-breakers in the nose and not weep over them and lead them to the
nearest bar and say, 'Go to it, erring brother!'"

"Jim!"

For all the while he had been drawing her nearer as he was speaking.
And she was in his arms now, laughing a little, crying a little, her
flushed face hidden on his shoulder.

He drew a deep breath and, holding her imprisoned, looked down at
her.

"Will you marry me, Palla?"

"Oh, Jim, do you want me now?"

"Now, darling, but not this minute, because a clergyman must come
first."

It was cruel of him, as well as vigorously indelicate. Her hot blush
should have shamed him; her conversion should have sheltered her.

But the man had had a hard time, and the bitterness was but just
going.

"Will you marry me, Palla?"

After a long while her stifled whisper came: "You are brutal. Do you
think I would do anything else--now?"

"No. And you never would have either."

Lying there close in his arms, she wondered. And, still wondering, she
lifted her head and looked u