the woman I have dreamed of--and longed to
meet--the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom
I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give. Selma, I love
you--I adore you."

Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe. It
seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing,
was his avowal. She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than
he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his
presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that
this was love--the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to
inspire and to feel. Compared with it, Babcock's clumsy ecstasy and her
own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion. Of so much she was
conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect
restrained her from casting herself into his arms. It was, indeed, soon,
and she had been happy in her liberty. At least, she had supposed
herself so; and she owed it to her own plans and hopes not to act
hastily, though she knew what she intended to do. She had been lonely,
yes starving, for lack of true companionship, and here was the soul
which would be a true mate to hers.

They were sitting on a grassy bank. He was bending toward her with
clasped hands, a picture of fervor. She could see him out of the corner
of her glance, though she looked into space with her gaze of seraphic
worry. Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful
satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought
that at last happiness had come to her.

The silence was very brief, but Littleton, as would have seemed fitting
to her, feared lest she were shocked.

"I distress you," he said. "Forgive me. Listen--will you listen?" Selma
was glad to listen. The words of love, such love as this, were
delicious, and she felt she owed it to herself not to be won too easily.
"I am listening," she answered softly with the voice of one face to face
with an array of doubts.

"Before I met you, Selma, woman but was a name to me. My life brought me
little into contact with them, except my dear sister, and I had no
temptation to regret that I could not support a wife. Yet I dreamed of
woman and of love and of a joy which might some day come to me if I
could meet one who fulfilled my ideal of what a true woman should be. So
I dreamed until I met you. The first time I saw you, Selma, I knew in