the shops,--and
wants to appoint me the General Attorney for the Southern Section. They
want me to come on to New York by the first train. Can you marry me in
the morning so we can take the noon express from Bolivar? I won't go
without you. Please, dear, please," and as he stood and looked at me in
the firelight, all the relief and excitement over his news died out of
his lovely eyes and just the want of me filled them from their very
depths.

For several interminable centuries of time I stood perfectly still and
looked into them daringly, drinking my fill for the first time and
offering him a like cup in my own.

"Eve," he said so softly that I doubt if he really spoke the word.

"Adam!" I let myself go, and at last pressed my answer against his lips
as he folded me tight and safe.

It must have been some time after, I am sure I don't know how long, but
I was most beautifully adjusted against his shoulder and he had my hand
pressed to his cheek, when the awfulness of what had happened brought me
straight up on my own feet and almost out of his arms.

"Oh, how could you have done it!" I fairly wailed, as I thought of what
this awful complication was going to lose for the Five to whom I felt
more tender in that second than I had ever felt before.

"Done what?" he demanded in alarm, pressing both my hands against his
breast and drawing me towards him again.

"Asked me to marry you when I--"

"I have been fighting desperately to see some way to offer myself and
all my impedimenta to you all this time, and this has made it all right,
don't you see, dear?" he interrupted me to say, as he took possession of
me again and held me with a tender fierceness, which had more of
suffering in it than passion. "I have always wanted you, Eve, since
before you went away, but it didn't seem right to ask you to come into a
life so encumbered as mine was. Poverty made it seem impossible, but
now, if you will be just a little patient with them all, I can
arrange--"

"I was going to arrange all that my own self, and now just see what you
have done to me and a whole lot of other women, besides making me
miserable all summer," and crowded so close under his chin that he
couldn't see my face, I told him all about the tinder-box Jane had
loaded and then set me on the lid to see that it exploded.

I had just worked myself up to the point of how my incendiary mission
was about to touch off all the other love affairs in town, when he beg